A part le bonheur, il n’y a rien d’essentiel: The Transnational Narrative Model in Maryse Condé’s Desirada
Item
Title
A part le bonheur, il n’y a rien d’essentiel: The Transnational Narrative Model in Maryse Condé’s Desirada
Link
https://www.routledge.com/Transnational-Africana-Womens-Fictions/Sterling/p/book/9781032011288
List of Authors
Eliana Vagalau
Abstract
The chapter contends that Maryse Condé’s novel Desirada has been repeatedly read as an identity quest novel, since the narrative impulse is determined by the protagonist’s search for her father’s identity. It argues, however, that Condé goes one step further by entirely subverting the identity quest narrative and presenting us with an excess, the production of fiction, which becomes something entirely different: a quest for an aesthetic truth rather than a filially determined identity. As such, by presenting us with a pastiche of the identity quest model, Condé’s transnationalism moves from minor to major, as her critique aims to dismantle the solidification of postcolonial ideology within the fields of literary and cultural studies.
Date
September 1, 2021
Publication Title
Transnational Africana Women's Fictions
Publisher
Routledge
Identifier
9781003177272
Bibliographic Citation
"A part le bonheur, il n’y a rien d’essentiel: The Transnational Narrative Model in Maryse Condé’s Desirada” in Transnational Africana Women's Fictions, ed. Cheryl Sterling, London, Routledge, September 2021.