Book Reviews

New Francophone Writing

Johanne Melançon (Author) and Lucie Hotte (Author)
Thémes et variations. Regards sur la littérature franco-ontarienne. Prise de Parole
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Larry Steele (Author), Sophie Beaulé (Author), Joëlle Cauville (Author),
Appartenances dans la littérature francophone d'Amérique du Nord. Le Nordir
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Hédi Bouraoui (Author)
Transpoètique. Éloge du nomadisme. Mémoire d’encrier
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Reviewed by Louise H. Forsyth

These recent publications provide evidence of the rich diversity of contemporary francophone writing in Canada and North America. Two of the books, Thèmes et variations and Appartenances, contain conference proceedings: one on Ontario writers, another on North American writers. The third, Transpoétique. Éloge du nomadisme, is a collection of short essays. These writers have produced poetry, novels, plays, short stories, essays, and songs. They offer wide perspectives on geopolitical realities of the twenty-first century—travel, migration, exile, vagabondage, feminism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, alternative sexualities. At the same time, they have not forgotten the issues underlying traditional francophone themes—speaking a minority language, personal and collective identity, personal and collective memory, attachment to place and cultural traditions, family and social relations, spirituality.

The notion of la francophonie has evolved at a remarkable rate since its appearance in the 1960s and 1970s. In the beginning, writers and artists drew their subjects and themes primarily from a shared sense of belonging to a specific national entity. Such entities, whether or not they were independent countries, were often disadvantaged and stuck in situations that François Paré has cogently captured in the epithet l’exiguïté. Questions of identity, space, otherness, and injustice were particularly urgent. The writers discussed in the conference proceedings show through the evolution of their work that they were able to address these questions, while renewing their artistic vision in ways that move beyond the discourse of victimization. At the same time, the faces of la francophonie have been changing radically. In recent decades, writers whose ancestors were not part of founding Canada have become integral to the sociocultural fabric of the country. These writers may have spent years on the move, carrying ties to other places around the world. They have their own experiences with institutionalised religions, and, in many cases, speak other languages in addition to French.

These three books demonstrate the remarkable adaptability of this country’s French-speaking people in staying abreast of rapid social changes, producing works that reflect divergent experiences, developing theoretical positions that illuminate new senses of personal and collective identity, and rendering porous the walls of fear and even hate that all too often separate peoples with distinct cultural traditions. The writers and critics in these volumes appear to be unanimous in celebrating, not regretting, le métissage. The disintegration of the binary structure reflected in the tenacious metaphor of Canada’s two solitudes is frequently mentioned with approval.

Most of the articles in the two books of conference proceedings offer probing analyses of works by several individual writers, as well as plenary addresses, papers on broader theoretical issues, a writers’ round table, and a general discussion. The major themes identified in the articles are the quest for identity, the Other and otherness, writing, space, love, the body, violence, and death. Formal elements studied include narrative strategies, humor/ irony/ parody, characterisation, language as both discourse and trope, and intertextuality.

These two volumes of analyses are welcome additions to a growing body of literary criticism on francophone literature. However, Thèmes et variations is poorly bound. It falls apart as soon as it is opened. As well, the article “Grand-Pré: lieu de mémoire, lieu d’appartenance” in Appartenances appears a poor fit in the volume. The approach of this historical study, which makes almost no mention of contemporary writers, seems out of touch with questions being addressed in the other essays.

Hédi Bouraoui, author of Transpoétique, has been a prolific writer throughout a long career as writer and professor. He has published numerous volumes of poetry, novels, and essays. His literary work shows him to be a remarkable pioneer of the approach that characterizes the writing of authors discussed in the conference proceedings: the passion for cultural métissage, mobility, openness, and commitment to language and writing as the way to shatter tenacious boundaries between people. Transpoétique is a collection of 17 short, exquisitely poetic and erudite essays, many of which were previously published. The first seven essays illustrate Bouraoui’s frequent use of neologisms and portmanteau words, some of which are: nomaditude, nomadité, transculturalité, interculturalité, transculturalisme, nomader, transpoïétique créaculture, orignalitude, transcréation. They signal his objective to blend cultures and imagine previously unknown cultural syntheses for which words did not previously exist. The book is a summum of his vision of boldly breaching in stultifying reality, at the interstices of which poets, who have freed themselves from clichés, ideological hegemony and binary thought, might plunge in order to open spaces for plurivocité. Bouraoui articulates in his essays a poetic imperative that engages both ethics and aesthetics.

The second half of the book contains essays that provide commentaries on several cultural voices that make up Canada’s diverse mosaic, with particular attention paid to aboriginal and other previously silenced voices. These essays apply Bouraoui’s theoretical position as developed in the first half of the volume.

Transpoétique also contains two particularly poetic essays. “Méditerranée: métaphore vive,” the book’s central essay, expresses the author’s personal sense of finding his place on three continents, belonging simultaneously to many cultures, and drawing spiritual and intellectual nourishment in all of them. The final essay reiterates in a fresh and intense poetic mode all that Bouraoui has said so far. It is a particularly compelling call to commitment to poetry, openness to cultural diversity, and energy for radical social change.

This review originally appeared in Canadian Literature #192 (Spring 2007), Gabrielle Roy contemporaine/The Contemporary Gabrielle Roy. (pg. 130 - 132)

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