In recent years, critical interest in francophone literature has become increasingly pronounced. In the case of the French Caribbean, the work of several writers (Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, for example) has gained international recognition, and has formed a vital part of more general debates on history, culture, language and identity in the post colonial world. The majority of such writers, however, have been male and, perhaps recalling the preference that France has always shown for the island, have come in large part from Martinique. Mapping a Tradition: Francophone Women’s Writing from Guadeloupe aims to explore a different side of francophone Caribbean writing through the examination of selected novels by Jacqueline Manicom, Michèle Lacrosil, Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart and Dany Bébel-Gisler. Placing the work of these writers in the context of that of their better-known, male counterparts, this study argues that it has provided an important mode of intervention in, and disruption of, a literary tradition which has failed to address questions of sexual difference and has often excluded issues relating to French Caribbean women. At the same time, this study suggests that Guadeloupean women’s writing of the last thirty years may he seen to constitute a ‘tradition’ in itself, replete with its own influences and inheritances. At once within, and outside the ‘dominant’ tradition, women's writing from Guadeloupe - and Martinique - has come to occupy a position at the forefront of contemporary efforts to expand and redefine a still-burgeoning corpus of literary and theoretical work.
This book, originally published in paperback in 2000 under the ISBN 978-1-902653-20-4, was made Open Access in 2025 as part of the MHRA Revivals programme.
Reviews:
‘This scholarly work is a valuable resource for students, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels as well as for the broader academic community, for it offers various points of entry for the reader, including those interested in Caribbean literatures, francophone literatures, postcolonial theory and criticism, feminist theories, popular culture, and the politics of identity, among other related fields.’ — Suzanne Crosta, International Journal of Francophone Studies 8, 2005, 105-08
In the case of the Antilles those islands of the Francophone Caribbean whose notion of 'national borders' has always, at best, been problematic, but which nonetheless possess a rich and diverse literature the idea of a 'national literature' is fraught with difficulty. While writing in French from the Antilles would no longer wish to define itself exclusively as 'French', it is equally unable to define itself as a national literature. Rather, Antillean literature continues to be intimately and vitally 'anchored' to place, to time, to local history and to geography.
The earliest published Antillean women writer is usually taken to be the Martinican Mayotte Capécia: her work may be seen to have functioned as a pre-text for many of the Antillean women writers of subsequent generations. Indeed, it is the work of two such writers which I wish to examine here: Michele Lacrosil's Sapotille et le serin d'argile and Cajou, and Jacqueline Manicom's Mon Examen de Blanc.
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55-91
2. The Return of Africa's Daughters: Négritude and the Gendering of Exile Sam Haigh doi:10.59860/td.c6a900c
It is in the early work of perhaps the best-known, and most prolific, Guadeloupean woman writer, Maryse Condé, that a movement beyond the concerns of Lacrosil and Manicom may be discerned. In Condé's first two novels we are presented, once more, with educated Antillean women who have journeyed from their native Guadeloupe to France. However, the journeys of these two women do not stop with their arrival in France. Instead, both Veronica, of Condé's first novel Heremakhonon, and Marie-Helene of her later Une Saison à Rihata, go further: to Africa, in search not of their ancestors the Gauls but in search, this time, of their African past.
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92-126
3. The Continuing Quest for Origins — History as Filiation Sam Haigh doi:10.59860/td.c6c41af
As we shall see during the course of this chapter, the quest for Africa, whether that ofthe negritude poets, or that of more recent writers such as Condé, by no means represents the ultimate manifestation of the Antillean preoccupation with origins. The obsessive search for the motherland which characterizes all of the texts examined in the previous chapter, is but part of the Antillean desire to situate him or herself outside of a relationship with Europe. The positing of Africa as nurturing, maternal source, it would seem, fails to constitute an adequate rehabilitation of lost origins.
In this chapter, the continued quest for Antillean history and identity will be examined in two texts - Lacrosil's Demain Jab-Herma and Condé's Traversée de la mangrove. These are texts which represent, for both of their authors, a return to Guadeloupe after a long preoccupation either with France, in the case of Lacrosil, or with Africa in the case of Condé. Like the novels examined in the previous chapter, these are texts which are separated by a number of years, and which deal with apparently disparate themes, yet which can be seen, upon closer examination, to have a great deal in common.
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5. Narratives of Enslavement and Liberation: Finding a 'Mothertongue' Sam Haigh doi:10.59860/td.c8ca39d
The texts to be explored in this chapter are, like those examined in the previous two chapters, concerned with the (re)writing of history. Both texts, much more overtly than any of those hitherto examined, are narratives of resistance: to what Glissant terms 'History' and, more specifically, to histories of slavery, both dominant and marginal. Condé's Moi, Tituba, sorcière... Noire de Salem, for example, seeks both to rewrite dominant historical narratives on the Salem witch trials of seventeenth-century New England and to explore various historical portrayals of slavery. Dany Bébel-Gisler's Léonora, l'histoire enfouie de la Guadeloupe, meanwhile, deals like Condé's Heremakhonon and Une Saison à Rihata, with the contemporary Antillean experience of the legacy of slavery.
Recent Francophone writing by Guadeloupean women has been vital to the development of the very literary and theoretical tradition from which it has been excluded. Not least, because it has provided an important mode of intervention in, and disruption of, the basic tenets of that tradition; a constant commentary upon the difference that gender and sexuality make to what might be termed 'sexually indifferent' narratives of resistance. More even than this, Guadeloupean women's writing of the last thirty years may be seen to constitute a 'tradition' of its own at once within and outside of the 'mainstream' tradition replete with its own influences and inheritances.
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Bibliography entry:
Haigh, Sam, Mapping a Tradition: Francophone Women’s Writing from Guadeloupe, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 48 (MHRA, 2000)
First footnote reference:35 Sam Haigh, Mapping a Tradition: Francophone Women’s Writing from Guadeloupe, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 48 (MHRA, 2000), p. 21.
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