Spaces of Creation: Transculturality and Feminine Expression in Francophone Literature(After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France)

Drawing links between the Francophone literatures of Canada, the French Caribbean, and North Africa, Spaces of Creation demonstrates that problematic issues of dynamic, postcolonial societies can and do fuel creative acts on the part of women. The trying experiences of displaced mothers and their daughters, including isolation, domestic violence, and single parenthood, often serve to inspire introspection and creative action. In effect, their painful, frustrating existence provides the opportunity—the space of creation—necessary to weave and transmit stories. Organized around different manifestations of culturally diverse or transcultural spaces depicted in postcolonial literature—rural villages, domestic spaces, city centers, and spaces of otherness—the monograph uncovers the complexities of mothering and “daughtering” in contemporary Francophone contexts. Through discussion of these spaces, the book attests to a specifically “feminine” transculturality. This vision of diversity acknowledges both the heartening and tragic aspects of life in dynamic, multicultural communities, revealing creative synergies between the literatures of different Francophone diasporas and inviting the reader to reconsider the mother-daughter relationship.

About the Author :
Allison Connolly is associate professor of French and humanities at Centre College.

Review :
The work’s greatest strength is its attentiveness to the role of ageing and death in the emergence of transcultural expression.... The study provides an excellent springboard from which to reflect upon the questions raised. Allison Connolly’s well crafted study is the first comprehensive exploration of literary transculturality as a potential space of resistance in Francophone Canada, the French Caribbean, and North Africa. It opens new windows and an ingenious framework to rethink and re-frame the debates in Francophone studies in the last two decades. Spaces of Creation unveils the many facets and challenges of mother-daughter relationships and the power of mother’s voices beyond silence and death in various Francophone regions of the world beyond colonial times and in today’s world.