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Staging Diaspora: Memory, Writing, and Antagonism in Maryse Condé's Desirada

Staging Diaspora: Memory, Writing, and Antagonism in Maryse Condé's Desirada laurie eDSoN Staging Diaspora Memory, Writing, and Antagonism in Maryse Condé's Desirada Born on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to a 15-year-old mother who first tries to kill herself and then abandons her daughter to find work in France, the child Marie-Noëlle is blissfully unaware of the history of abuse, rape, and violence embedded in her family. When she turns 10, however, Marie-Noëlle learns that she must leave her Caribbean island and travel to France to rejoin the mother who had abandoned her as a child and now reclaims her. Marie-Noëlle suffers violent convulsions and falls into a coma for one week. From this traumatic emotional and physical dislocation, Maryse Condé weaves a novel of Marie-Noëlle's travels from the Caribbean to France and the United States, and back to the Caribbean, in a quest for the "truth" of the story of her birth, mysteriously entwined in the history of violence, rape, and abuse that permeates not only her own family but also the history of her people. Marie-Noëlle's personal story produces echoes of the history of the Caribbean, that always-already hybrid place whose "origins" are long gone--a space repopulated by Africans torn from their own land to be http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Comparatist University of North Carolina Press

Staging Diaspora: Memory, Writing, and Antagonism in Maryse Condé's Desirada

Edson, Laurie.
The Comparatist , Volume 37 (1) – May 12, 2013
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University of North Carolina Press
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Copyright © Southern Comparative Literature Association.
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1559-0887
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Abstract

laurie eDSoN Staging Diaspora Memory, Writing, and Antagonism in Maryse Condé's Desirada Born on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to a 15-year-old mother who first tries to kill herself and then abandons her daughter to find work in France, the child Marie-Noëlle is blissfully unaware of the history of abuse, rape, and violence embedded in her family. When she turns 10, however, Marie-Noëlle learns that she must leave her Caribbean island and travel to France to rejoin the mother who had abandoned her as a child and now reclaims her. Marie-Noëlle suffers violent convulsions and falls into a coma for one week. From this traumatic emotional and physical dislocation, Maryse Condé weaves a novel of Marie-Noëlle's travels from the Caribbean to France and the United States, and back to the Caribbean, in a quest for the "truth" of the story of her birth, mysteriously entwined in the history of violence, rape, and abuse that permeates not only her own family but also the history of her people. Marie-Noëlle's personal story produces echoes of the history of the Caribbean, that always-already hybrid place whose "origins" are long gone--a space repopulated by Africans torn from their own land to be

Journal

The Comparatist – University of North Carolina Press

Published: May 12, 2013

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