Un Homme En Quatre Morceaux? Dany Laferrière, Identity, and the Académie Française

Abstract

In 2015, Haitian-born writer Dany Laferrière was inducted into the Académie française. An important component of the académicien's role is to attend weekly meetings in Paris, which necessitated Laferrière's relocation from Montreal to the French capital. This article explores how this new phase of Laferrière's life inflects his personal, literary, and intellectual trajectory through a study of two of his works that deal explicitly with his involvement in the Academy: Autoportrait de Paris avec chat (2018) and Dany Laferrière à l'Académie française (2015).