Calixthe Beyala: Performances of Migration by Nicki Hitchcott

Abstract

II36 Reviews Calixthe Beyala: Performances of Migration. By NICKI HITCHCOTT. Liverpool: Li verpool University Press. 2oo6. xviii + I90 pp. ?40. ISBN 978-1-8463I-028-7. With Calixthe Beyala: Performances of Migration, Nicki Hitchcott offers an eloquent analysis of the literaryoutput of francophone Africa's most successful woman writer. In the firstbook-length study of Beyala to be published inEnglish, Hitchcott places theemphasis on Beyala the migrant writer, exploring her problematic status inFrance, where her novels have received critical acclaim but where her efforts to be taken se riously as awriter have been undermined by themedia's attempts to expose her as a fraud. Analysing the performance ofmigrant identities by both Beyala and her fictional characters and tracing the fictionalmigration of Beyala's settings between Africa and France, Hitchcott provides close critical analysis of thewriter's novels fromC'est le soleil quim'a brulee (I987) toLa Plantation (2005). Calixthe Beyala: Performances ofMigration engages with postcolonial theory as well as recent research in the fields of literarycriticism and cultural studies, adopting a pluralist approach which, the author asserts, reflectsboth the syncretic nature of postcolonial migrant subjectivities and the comparative and interdisciplinary nature of postcolonial studies. This tightly structured study is divided thematically into five chapters and opens with an exploration of the reception of Beyala's work in France and Africa. Hitchcott considers Beyala's status as an icon of black femininity inFrance and analyses her commodification as a symptom ofwhat Graham Huggan terms the 'postcolonial exotic' (The Postcolonial Exotic (London: Routledge, 200 I)). Examining Beyala's fictional negotiations of 'authenticity' and exploring theways inwhich thewriter engages with the discourse of exoticist representations ofAfrica in her novels, Hitchcott contends that in alternately rejecting and reclaiming myths and stereotypes about Africa, Beyala positions herself both inside and outside the authenticities invented by France. The central chapter 'Migrating Subjectivities' addresses issues of language and identity through close analysis of the novels thatdeal explicitly with migration from sub-Saharan Africa toFrance. The author argues thatBeyala's portrayal of her char acters' attempts to locate themselves inFrance reflects thewriter's own strugglewith locational labelling. Hitchcott suggests that this comes to a head inLettre d'une Afro franfaise a ses compatriotes (2000) inBeyala's claiming of an Afro-francaise identity thatmarks her association with the 'ambivalence ofmimicry' (Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 86), through which myths of cultural difference are at once articulated, challenged, and reformulated. Hitchcott explores theways inwhich Beyala and her characters negotiate identity through performance and improvisation by conformingwith or disrupting cultural norms, ar guing that the writer embraces theambivalent space she occupies inFrance toperform hermarginality in a strategic attempt to reappropriate exoticism toher own ends. Rigorous in its scholarship, Hitchcott's Calixthe Beyala is an invaluable and ac cessible resource forboth specialists and the reader coming toBeyala's work for the firsttime. LANCASTER UNIVERSITY CHARLOTTE BAKER Lesbian Inscriptions inFrancophone Society and Culture. Ed. by RENATE GUTNTHER and WENDY MICHALLAT. (Durham Modern Languages Series) Durham: Durham University. 2007. vi+239 pp. LI9.50. ISBN 978-09073i0-62-4. This volume comprises eleven chapters originating inpapers given at an eponymously named conference organized by theeditors at theUniversity of Sheffield in2004. The contributors are a diverse, cross-disciplinary group of commentators from France, ...