Ces âmes chagrines by Léonora Miano

Abstract

dans la folie de Jad, ces couches semblent devenir de plus en plus perméables et le signifiant en déroute marque progressivement son impuissance à arrêter un sens, une réalité aux contours fixes—le tout formant l’image d’un voyage halluciné. Au-delà de tout diagnostic médical, Lançon présente une sorte de phénoménologie de la folie où les références culturelles, les récits et les perceptions personnelles se brouillent à mesure que l’appareil digestif de son personnage se dérègle sous les tropiques. Au début, le narrateur narcissique, complaisant, fortement ancré dans sa position d’intellectuel parisien ne semble jamais vraiment voyager, réaffirmant jugement après jugement, phrase après phrase, référence littéraire après référence littéraire, sa propre position culturelle sur les Russes, les Chinois, l’amour, l’adult ère, la littérature, les vins; mais progressivement, alors que le récit en vient à décrire plus en détails les éléments des vies, et se concentre plus sur le voyage à Cuba de Jad, la voix narrative qui avait fait de la digression son mode de parole se laisse elle-même emporter et mettre en crise par son objet, laissant place à un doute qui n’est plus l’apanage du bon élève un peu nonchalant, mais le début d’un ébranlement véritable. Le lecteur ou la lectrice contemple alors au travers du désarroi du narrateur quelque chose qui ressemble à l’obsolescence d’un certain être-au-monde caractéristique du dandy eurocentrique et du héros stendhalien enfermé dans son propre regard. California State University, San Marcos Marion Geiger MIANO, LÉONORA. Ces âmes chagrines. Paris: Plon, 2011. ISBN 978-2-259-21287-8. Pp. 281. 20 a. Born in Cameroon, Miano has been living in France since 1991, writing novels that have been well received, including Contours du jour qui vient (2006), which won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. While her first published works concentrate on an African experience, her last four published novels (I emphasize “published ” because the publication order is not necessarily the order in which Miano wrote them), including the most recent, are based on the experiences of Afropeans, a term Miano has coined to refer to diasporic populations living in Europe (especially France), Africa and the Caribbean, but whose stories meet in Paris. As in many of her previous works, Ces âmes chagrines follows a main character who is trying to establish an identity inside or outside of a relationship with his mother and the rest of his family. In Miano’s works, the mother stands in for mothers everywhere, on the one hand, and for the continent of Africa on the other, as well as the complex nexus of diasporic African identities. The relationship between mother and child in this author’s work is never easy. There is always pain, anger, misunderstanding, inadequate love, desperation, violence and blame. But there are also gifts, epiphanies, wisdoms and discoveries of love, first and foremost within the protagonist, which are made possible through the relationship with the mother. Such is the case with Antoine Kingué, known to most as Snow, whose mother Thamar left him to the care of boarding schools in France, and then to his grandmother Modi in the (imaginary) Sub-Saharan country of Mboasu for summer vacations. There, he came to know other brothers also abandoned by Thamar and whom he never necessarily liked. One in particular, Maxime, is exploited by Snow Reviews 607 in return for the favor of borrowed identity papers when Maxime comes to study and then find work in France. Whereas Snow appears to be all about resentment, Maxime is all about gratitude; whereas Snow seems to despise his brother, Maxime genuinely loves Snow. Thus, this latter feels no bitterness as he hands over the major portion of his earnings to Snow, who does not work as he pursues his goal of making it as a model in France’s image industry due to his stunning good looks. When Snow becomes a television series star, his only thought is to rub his success...