This volume of essays explores what it is that has brought marginalized and often exiled writers, seen as treacherous, alienated, and/or queer by their societies and nations together by way of Paris. Spanning from the inter-war period of the late 1920s to the present millennium, this volume considers many seminal questions that have influenced and continue to shape the realm of exiled writers who have sought refuge in Paris in order to write. Additionally, the volume’s essays seek to define alienation and marginalization as not solely subscribing to any single denominator -- sexual preference, gender, or nationality-- but rather as shared modes of being that allow authors to explore what it is to write from abroad in a place that is foreign yet freed of the constrictions of one’s home space. What makes Paris a particularly fruitful space that has allowed these authors and their writings to cross national, ethnic, racial, religious, and linguistic boundaries for over a century? What is it that brings together writers such as Moroccan Abdellah Taïa, Americans James Baldwin, Richard Wright and, most recently, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Shay Youngblood, Algerian Nabile Farès, Franco-Algerian Leila Sebbar, Canadian Nancy Huston, French Jean Genet and French-Vietnamese Linda Lê? How do their representations and understanding of transgression and marginalization transcend national, linguistic and ethnic boundaries, leading ultimately to revolution, both literary and literal? How does their writing help us to trace the history of Paris as a literary and artistic capital that has been useful for authors’ exploration of the Self, race and home country? These are but a few of the many questions explored in this volume.
This book relies on an inherently intersectional approach, which is not based in reified identities, whether they be LGBT, postcolonial, ethnic, national, or linguistic. Instead, we posit that, for example, queer theory, and a “politics of difference”i can help us investigate the dynamics of these multiple identity positions, and hence provide a broader understanding of the lived experiences of these writers, and, perhaps, their readers from the early 1940s to the present.
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Review Paris and the Marginalized Author provides an original and welcome lens through which the shadowy sides of the City of Lights come to life from the thirties to the present. The juxtaposition of multiple perspectives on authors from different origins (from African-American to Algerian), some of them little known, offers to the reader a unique Paris, haunted by the ghosts of its colonial history. The complex cartography that emerges as a multilayered palimpsest connects race, class, gender, and sexuality and creates an alternative map of the French capital bound to change the way we study Paris. (Joëlle Vitiello, Macalester College)
Pears and Orlando’s edited volume Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation , Queerness and Exile is a great example of the embodiment of intersectionality, inviting readers to rethink notions of identities based on nationality, home and language. The paradox of Paris is that it is simultaneously mystified and vilified because it is a space that on the one hand welcomes some writers and dictators of different race, creed, and sexual belonging, while on the other hand marginalizes and alienates other writers and asylum seekers. The writers of this volume represent France’s ongoing struggle with its own double consciousness, métissage, history of oppression, violence and slavery. (Cécile Accilien, Kansas University)
Moving beyond paradigms of melancholia and debilitating loss, this perceptive volume rethinks exile as a site of productive estrangement enmeshed in transnational political struggles. A vibrant reflection on the marginalized subjects’ aspiration to find their place in the world. (Edwige Tamalet Talbayev, Tulane University)
This outstanding co-edited volume comprises a stunning set of excellent, thought-provoking and original essays. The analyses examine the ways in which exiled writers of various origins addressed marginalization and related themes while living in Paris. The contributors aptly demonstrate that due to the diverse linguistic, national, ethnic, religious and sexual identities of the examined authors, their creative productions have participated in major ongoing local and global debates about race, gender, literature, sexuality, politics, postcolonialism and bilingualism. (Hakim Abderrezak, University of Minnesota)
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About the Author Valérie K. Orlando is professor of French and Francophone literatures in the Department of French & Italian at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Pamela A. Pears is professor of French at Washington College.
Contributors : Laila Amine & Dr. Leslie Barnes & Sandra Messinger Cypess & Karl Ashoka Britto & Norrell Edwards & Felix Germain & Aparna Nayak & Denis M. Provencher & Laura Reeck & Alison Rice & T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting
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