Women's Lives in Contemporary French and Francophone Literature

CONTENTS

Preface: Where the Lines Cross


Karen McPherson and Florence Ramond Jurney

 I.  Defining the Mother



 

Aban-donner: The Maternal in Le jour où je n'étais pas là

Laurie Corbin 



The Accidental Author: Motherhood, Woundability, and Writing in Maryse Condé's La vie sans fards

Nicole Simek

 

Childless Mothers: Personal Perspectives from Francophone Women Writers

Alison Rice

 

"If you don't have children, you must be...": Linda Lê's À l'enfant que je n'aurai pas and Voluntary Non-Motherhood

Julie Rodgers

 Linda Lê's Antigonal Refusal of Motherhood



Gillian Ni Cheallaigh

 

Free At Last: Coming to Terms with the Mother in the Woman in La noce d'Anna by Nathacha Appanah

Florence Ramond Jurney 



II.  Defining the Aging Self

 

La dernière adresse: Possessions, Dispossession, and the Preservation of Memory

Jean Anderson

 

Redefining the Self: Explorations of Aging in Michèle Sarde's Constance et la cinquantaine and Nancy Huston's Dolce agonia

Susan Ireland and Patrice J. Proulx

 

A Daughter No More: (National) Identity and the Adult Orphan in Loin de mon père by Véronique Tadjo

Amy Baram Reid

 Writing the Mother Immortal: Cixous and Dupré



Karen McPherson




Notes on the Contributors

Bibliography

Index

Florence Ramond Jurney is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Gettysburg College, USA. She has published two critical monographs: Voix/es libres: Maternité et identité féminine dans la littérature antillaise (2006) and Representations of the Island in Caribbean Literature: Caribbean Women Redefine their Homelands (2009). She also coordinated a special issue of Nouvelles études francophones on Gisèle Pineau's work (2012).

Karen McPherson is Professor of French at the University of Oregon, USA. She is the author of two critical monographs: Incriminations: Guilty Women/Telling Stories (1994) and Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future: Recent Generations of Canadian Women Writing (2006). She is also a poet and literary translator.