The Quebec Connection: A Poetics of Solidarity in Global Francophone Literatures By Julie-Françoise Tolliver

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Quebec Connection: A Poetics of Solidarity in Global Francophone Literatures by Julie-Françoise Tolliver Cameron Cook The Quebec Connection: A Poetics of Solidarity in Global Francophone Literatures BY JULIE-FRANÇOISE TOLLIVER U of Virginia P, 2020. x + 279 pp. ISBN 9780813944890 paper. Julie-Françoise Tolliver’s book, The Quebec Connection: A Poetics of Solidarity in Global Francophone Literatures, adeptly examines how Quebecois writers turned to Africa and the Caribbean to express solidarity in the struggle for independence. The book begins by informing the reader that this engagement reveals “both gaps and unexpected connections in the francophone political imaginary” (4). Tolliver contends that the authors studied “call on metaphors and similes to do the work of abstracting shared traits, while allowing space for difference to flourish” (15). Via an astute reading of a diverse slate of French-language writers, Tolliver shows that an articulation of transnational, transracial solidarity took hold in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, decades when independence was at the forefront of leftist politics. Chapter one, “‘Interior Geographies’: Solidarity Locations of Aimé Césaire’s Poetics,” considers the ways in which “Césaire’s plays express his solidary convictions, trace possible ways of constructing or reaching for solidarity, and alleviate the lack of linguistic articulations of solidarity” (25). Tolliver thus argues that while the plays studied have solidarity as their center, linguistic and racial divisions nevertheless haunt Césaire in his egalitarian quest. It is here that she also examines Césaire’s 1972 Quebec City lectures, offering an analysis in which the Martinican author “shows a willingness to express solidarity in spite of difference, in spite of the racial hierarchies that continue to structure the French-speaking world” (74). The book’s second chapter, “Interlace, Interrace: Anticolonialism and White Babies in Hubert Aquin’s Trou de mémoire,” tackles “Trou de mémoire’s unstable metaphorizations of interracial solidarity as experiments in articulating a desire for connection that remains always potential or asymptotic” (76). Interestingly, Tolliver’s analysis of Trou de mémoire posits that “the novel endeavors to debunk the myth of a white Quebec” (77). In so doing, the reader learns of Quebec’s relative isolation from the rest of the Francophone world and the ways in which Trou de mémoire attempts to build a bridge of solidarity between the province and other French-speaking areas. Chapter three, “Publishable Offense: Simile, Solidarity, and Mongo Beti’s Quebecois Main basse sur le Cameroun,” provides a most enthralling look at the para-texts present in Beti’s 1972 essay and the controversy surrounding its publication. [End Page 223] The text was banned in France, and its Montreal publication in 1974 led to a pronounced interest in “attempting to relate the Quebecois independence struggle to Cameroon’s anti-neocolonial struggle” (163–64). In the fourth chapter, “As through a Canadian Fog: Mort au Canada and Other Moroccan Mysteries,” Tolliver discusses how “Quebecois political effervescence inspired the Canadian novels of Driss Chraïbi (1926–2007), the Moroccan French novelist, in spite of his own scorn for nationalism” (165). She argues that because Quebec—where Chraïbi lived for a time—existed outside the France/Maghreb binary, it provided him with the space necessary to “reimagine human connection as well as his country of origin” (166). Moreover, we read that Chraïbi’s defense of the use of French in Quebec sees him “articulating the northern province’s nationalist struggle for independence” (213). The Quebec Connection: A Poetics of Solidarity in Global Francophone Literatures intelligently rethinks the relationship between Quebec and other parts of the French-speaking world. Its insights will be of interest to scholars of literary and social science backgrounds. Tolliver’s book is one that I undoubtedly recommend. Cameron Cook University of Minnesota cook0353@umn.edu Copyright © 2022 The Trustees of indiana University