Authorial identities in the work of Linda Lê

Abstract

Issues of authenticity, originality, and plagiarism have haunted Francophone literatures from the time Camara Laye was first accused of having copied the work of others. Official positions on plagiarism and copyright have provided a framework to judge the originality of literary and scholarly work, but even these pronouncements leave much open to interpretation, which may, in fact, mask the real motivations for accusations of plagiarism. Francophone writers with links to Vietnam would also be under scrutiny in such a context. Linda Lê, the most prolific writer “from Vietnam” who writes in French, cleverly and playfully treats the questions of literary authenticity, creativity, originality, intertextuality, and authorship in a strong metatextual thread running in some form throughout her long bibliography. In this way, she also examines the position of the immigrant writer in exile, the negotiation of multiple heritages and languages, and what is necessarily the shifting literary scene in France and elsewhere, as immigrant writers, among others, redefine “French literature.”