Bonnie Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496810557
- eISBN:
- 9781496810595
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496810557.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past explores the complex interchange between shared and personal pasts and how they impact upon individual lives. Through ...
More
Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past explores the complex interchange between shared and personal pasts and how they impact upon individual lives. Through their historically-informed self-writings, the five Caribbean authors that have been selected for this study–Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière–offer compelling insights into confronting, coming to terms with and reconciling with their past, both collective and individual. A central question is the conceptual link between singular and plural, between personal and collective notions of history and the connections that exist between them. The employment of ‘personal narratives’ as the vehicle to carry out this investigation encompasses the tension that is evident in the writers’ reflections, which constantly move between the collective and the personal and is embodied in the idea of ‘their past’–a complex, rhizomatic network that extends beyond the notion of a single, private life. The contrasting yet complementary nature of the book’s title–connecting histories and the personal past-underlines the existence of a shared past of which the five writers are deeply conscious, but also their own past, which overlaps with these historical inheritances. The book’s central focus, then, is trifold: it concerns a collective, and to some extent documented and shared, historical past; a more variable, unique, personal past revealed in the ‘personal narratives’ of the five authors as well as on the connections between these two pasts.Less
Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past explores the complex interchange between shared and personal pasts and how they impact upon individual lives. Through their historically-informed self-writings, the five Caribbean authors that have been selected for this study–Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edwidge Danticat and Dany Laferrière–offer compelling insights into confronting, coming to terms with and reconciling with their past, both collective and individual. A central question is the conceptual link between singular and plural, between personal and collective notions of history and the connections that exist between them. The employment of ‘personal narratives’ as the vehicle to carry out this investigation encompasses the tension that is evident in the writers’ reflections, which constantly move between the collective and the personal and is embodied in the idea of ‘their past’–a complex, rhizomatic network that extends beyond the notion of a single, private life. The contrasting yet complementary nature of the book’s title–connecting histories and the personal past-underlines the existence of a shared past of which the five writers are deeply conscious, but also their own past, which overlaps with these historical inheritances. The book’s central focus, then, is trifold: it concerns a collective, and to some extent documented and shared, historical past; a more variable, unique, personal past revealed in the ‘personal narratives’ of the five authors as well as on the connections between these two pasts.
Bonnie Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496810557
- eISBN:
- 9781496810595
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496810557.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The image of a rhizomatic network provides a visual framework for the present book. Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past reveals the way in which everything is ...
More
The image of a rhizomatic network provides a visual framework for the present book. Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past reveals the way in which everything is connected in the intertwining of histories and History and the personal narratives of each author examined highlights the interlocking threads of their personal lives and shared history. The writers engage with different aspects of their individual and collective pasts through their diverse autobiographical narratives, covering such areas as the individual and political, the linguistic, the literary and the traumatic. While their style and emphasis vary, they all demonstrate that the writing space is a sheltering and challenging place with the power to transform their own lives as well as those of their readers.Less
The image of a rhizomatic network provides a visual framework for the present book. Connecting Histories: Francophone Caribbean Writers Interrogating Their Past reveals the way in which everything is connected in the intertwining of histories and History and the personal narratives of each author examined highlights the interlocking threads of their personal lives and shared history. The writers engage with different aspects of their individual and collective pasts through their diverse autobiographical narratives, covering such areas as the individual and political, the linguistic, the literary and the traumatic. While their style and emphasis vary, they all demonstrate that the writing space is a sheltering and challenging place with the power to transform their own lives as well as those of their readers.
