Paris and the Marginalized Author

Reviews / Votes

This book will be of interest to a broad range of scholars in French and Francophonestudies, for all of us will find points of attachment within its covers, as we will always find a favourite quartier, park or bistrot in which to find refuge, if perhaps never feeling quite at home, in Paris. * H-France Review * The chronological and international scope of this excellent book of essays is ambitious, gathering analyses of works by authors from across most of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and the globe. . . Many scholars have taken up the theme of exile in recent years, but this set of essays takes the reader a step further. . .The reflections of these two authors, Louis-Philippe Dalembert (Haiti), and Bernardo Toro (Chile), close the book in a manner that highlights its far-reaching conclusions about not only the literature of exile but also literature as exile. * The French Review * Pears and Orlando's edited volume Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation , Queerness and Exile is a great example of the embodiment of intersectionality, inviting readers to rethink notions of identities based on nationality, home and language. The paradox of Paris is that it is simultaneously mystified and vilified because it is a space that on the one hand welcomes some writers and dictators of different race, creed, and sexual belonging, while on the other hand marginalizes and alienates other writers and asylum seekers. The writers of this volume represent France's ongoing struggle with its own double consciousness, metissage, history of oppression, violence and slavery. -- Cecile Accilien, Kansas University Paris and the Marginalized Author provides an original and welcome lens through which the shadowy sides of the City of Lights come to life from the thirties to the present. The juxtaposition of multiple perspectives on authors from different origins (from African-American to Algerian), some of them little known, offers to the reader a unique Paris, haunted by the ghosts of its colonial history. The complex cartography that emerges as a multilayered palimpsest connects race, class, gender, and sexuality and creates an alternative map of the French capital bound to change the way we study Paris. -- Joelle Vitiello, Macalester College Moving beyond paradigms of melancholia and debilitating loss, this perceptive volume rethinks exile as a site of productive estrangement enmeshed in transnational political struggles. A vibrant reflection on the marginalized subjects' aspiration to find their place in the world. -- Edwige Tamalet Talbayev, Tulane University This outstanding co-edited volume comprises a stunning set of excellent, thought-provoking and original essays. The analyses examine the ways in which exiled writers of various origins addressed marginalization and related themes while living in Paris. The contributors aptly demonstrate that due to the diverse linguistic, national, ethnic, religious and sexual identities of the examined authors, their creative productions have participated in major ongoing local and global debates about race, gender, literature, sexuality, politics, postcolonialism and bilingualism. -- Hakim Abderrezak, University of Minnesota