Writing In Between Worlds: Reflections on Language and Identity from Works by Nancy Huston and Leïla Sebbar

Abstract

This article analyzes the themes of language, cultural heterogeneity, and writing as liminal space in autobiographical nonfiction texts by Canadian-born bilingual author Nancy Huston and Algerian-born French writer Leïla Sebbar. In their coauthored correspondence on the theme of exile, Lettres parisiennes: Autopsie de l’exil, Huston and Sebbar describe writing as a land or territory, a place of one's own, and Sebbar defines exile as the very foundation of her being. Each writer explores the meaning of language in her life (English and French for Huston, French and Arabic for Sebbar), particularly as it relates to childhood and loss. Other themes include the construction and performance of self through language and writing; mobility, even instability, as vital constituents of identity; and exile and difference as freedom. While “exile” for these authors is not a question of forced migration, their reflections on living in between and across cultures—in the fault lines—have rich resonance for theorists, writers, travelers, and users of language in a globalized world.

Keywords:

• cultural heterogeneity
• exile
• identity
• language
• liminal space
• mobility
• writing

Notes

1. Huston and Sebbar, Lettres parisiennes: Autopsie de l’exil 10.

2. See Averis for an analysis of Huston's preoccupation with authenticity and cultural identity.

3. The simply structured poem, “Amour,” in Voyages en Algérie autour de ma chambre is a list of forbidden loves and mixed unions (from Arabic and French literature, including one of Sebbar's own texts), engendered by the double evocation of the first couple in Sebbar's life, her parents.

• Amour

• Mon père et ma mère

• Ma mère et mon père

• Majnun et Leïla

• Aucassin et Nicolette

• Tristan et Iseut

• Shéhérazade et le Sultan

• La princesse de Clèves et le duc de Nemours

• Swann et Odette

• Shérazade et Julien

• Marguerite et Sélim

• Amours clandestines

• Amours métisses

• On Sebbar's self-definition as métisse, see also Proulx (83–84).

4. Rice (“‘Making the Familiar Foreign’”) argues that Huston's desire for difference is a resistance to the dominating presence of the United States in North America and Europe (108) as well as to the uniformity of culture resulting from globalization.

5. Huston has said that when asked whether she is equally comfortable in both English and French, she responds, “No, equally uncomfortable” (“Decline of Identity?” 19).

6. See Harrington's discussion of the relation between writing and nomadism and the desire for personal territory (121–22), and see Proulx on the space of writing (85).

7. In a study of Huston's concern for authenticity, Averis views the contrived/spontaneous ambiguity of the correspondence as emblematic of the tension between constructed and primordial identities underlying Huston's anxiety (4). See also Proulx's analysis of the role of epistolarity in Lettres parisiennes.

8. Many authors claim that traces of their mother tongue are present as rhythm or music in the French language texts they write. Lebanese author Wajdi Mouawad, for one, claims that in his French texts “il y a le rythme de la langue arabe qui revient; l’arabe, c’est le rythme, le battement cardiaque” (Martin and Drevet 134). Similarly, Kristeva states in an interview that Bulgarian has left a music in her, in her accent and the sentence structure of her writing (Fort 4). The notion of a third language, or interlanguage, is also discussed by El Nossery (391), in the context of Moroccan author Khatibi and Huston. As Khatibi has stated, “La langue ‘maternelle’ est à l’oeuvre dans la langue étrangère” (Maghreb pluriel 179).