Ethnic Minority Women’s Writing in France: Publishing Practices and Identity Formation, 1998–2005. By Claire Mouflard

Abstract

In this book Claire Mouflard analyses the interplay between texts, paratexts, and epitexts to investigate how minority women’s identity construction was negotiated alongside the ‘utopic notion of French multiculturalism’ (p. 17). The book’s tightly focused chronological scope and narrow consideration of autobiographical and autofictional works enables Mouflard’s comparative approach, which draws together works published in France by female authors of North African, sub-Saharan African, and Vietnamese descent. Pairing original research into publishers’ archival materials with more traditional literary and (para)textual analyses, the book illustrates how many of the authors it considers ‘were fashioned according to gendered and colonial marketing practices’ (p. 8). Above all, Mouflard’s female-centric comparative focus on both those positionalities explicitly cognized under the banner of French multiculturalism (especially the ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’ refrain) and those who sat ‘outside of the millennium’s reductive multicultural utopia’ (notably, Franco-Vietnamese authors; p. 17), adds much to French cultural studies, race and ethnicity studies, and discussions around twentieth- and twenty-first-century French publishing politics. After an Introduction and contextualizing first chapter, each chapter then focuses on works by several female authors belonging to — or categorized as — one minority positionality. In Chapter 2, Mouflard shows how the paratexts of works by three authors officially branded as ‘Beur’ (Samira Bellil, Nina Bouraoui, and Nora Hamdi) also implicitly think of the authors along a secondary axis: banlieue or intégrée. In Chapter 3, Mouflard focuses on the paratextual construction of ‘Black’ and ‘Afro-French’ identities through works by Calixthe Beyala, Bessora, and Fatou Diome. As in Chapter 2, Mouflard traces a range of identity constructions: from Beyala’s ‘tokenization’ to Bessora’s ‘global and multifaceted black identity’ and Diome’s strategic use of the ‘epitext’ (p. 9). Finally, in Chapter 4, the focus turns to a group conspicuously absent from the ‘Black-Blanc-Beur’ formulation: Franco-Vietnamese authors. Here, Mouflard shows how publishers’ paratextual strategies branded Anna Moï and Linda Lê as ‘near-French’ literature though not without Orientalist echoes (p. 117; my emphasis). Beyond analysing how (para)texts construct gendered minority identities, Mouflard also adds depth to existing studies of the politics of metropolitan publishers and their lists, such as Gallimard’s ‘Collection blanche’ or Éditions de l’Aube’s ‘Regards croisés’. Mouflard’s original research into publishing houses’ archival records, notably those of Albin Michel (publisher of Beyala) and Christian Bourgois (publisher for Lê) in Chapter 1, unquestionably furthers existing conversations about some of the better-known authors she studies and her close readings of individual paratexts — especially those examining works’ multiple editions — are engaging and persuasive. While more time might have been spent discussing whether and how this period marks a radical break from prior or later publishing trends and unpacking whether the conclusions drawn in each case are most attributable to individual publishers, editors, or to broader, even universal publishing practices, Mouflard’s book nevertheless constitutes an important contribution to contemporary French cultural and literary studies. Above all, readers curious about the literary construction and the packaging of female minority positionalities in France will discover much to interest them.