Manchester University Press - Reimagining North African immigration

This volume takes the pulse of French post-coloniality by studying representations of trans-Mediterranean immigration to France in recent literature, television and film. The writers and filmmakers examined have found new ways to conceptualize the French heritage of immigration from North Africa and to portray the state of multiculturalism within - and in spite of - a continuing Republican framework. Their work deflates stereotypes, promotes respect for cultural and ethnic minorities and gives a new dignity to subjects supposedly located on the margins of the Republic. Establishing a productive dialogue with Marianne Hirsch's ground-breaking concept of postmemory, this volume provides a much-needed vocabulary for rethinking the intergenerational legacy of trans-Mediterranean immigrants.

Introduction - Véronique Machelidon and Patrick Saveau
1 'Qui fait la France?' New configurations of Frenchness in contemporary urban fiction - Steve Puig
2 Breaking the chains of ethnic identity: Faïza Guène, Saphia Azzeddine, and Nadia Bouzid, or the birth of a new Maghrebi-French women's literature - Patrick Saveau
3 From daughter to mother, from sister to brother: building identities in Faïza Guène's novels - Florina Matu
4 The immigrant in Abdellatif Kechiche's cinematic work: transcending the question of origins - Emna Mrabet
5 Seeking paths to existence in Rachid Djaïdani's Rengaine - Mona El Khoury
6 Beur and banlieue television comedies: new perspectives on immigration - Caroline Fache
7 They had a dream: out-marching exclusion and hatred - Jimia Boutouba
8 Narrativizing foreclosed history in 'postmemorial' fiction of the Algerian War in France: October 17, 1961, a case in point - Michel Laronde
9 Unearthing the father's secret: postmemory and identity in harki and pied-noir narratives - Véronique Machelidon
10 Representations of the harkis in contemporary French-language films - Susan Ireland
11 'L'oued revient toujours dans son lit': Franco-Maghrebi identity in Hassan Legzouli's film Ten'ja - Ramona Mielusel
12 Rewriting the memory of immigration: Samuel Zaoui's Saint Denis bout du monde - Mireille Le Breton
13 Harragas in Mediterranean illiterature and cinema - Hakim Abderrezak
Index

Editors

Véronique Machelidon is Associate Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina

Patrick Saveau is Professor of French and Cultural Studies at Franklin University Switzerland