Flawed Border Crossings in Life Writing by Fabienne Kanor and Gisèle Pineau

Abstract

In this essay, the authors compares two works of life writing by two French-language writers of Caribbean origin: Gisèle Pineau and Fabienne Kanor. Both writers represent contemporary border crossings in their work and, importantly, contextualize these border crossings in terms of the history of the Caribbean and the legacy of slavery. Their texts are read through the lens of Michael Sheringham’s notion of the “autobiographical turning point”—an event in life writing that defines the life and the life writer, that changes the direction of the narrative, and that performs the acts of remembering and forgetting. The authors argue that these writers’ texts present border crossings as turning points in their narratives that are flawed or failures, and that these major events became spiraling rather than turning points.

Keywords:

• border crossing
• French Caribbean
• life writing
• turning points

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Sheringham, French Autobiography.

2 Sheringham, “Autobiographical Turning Points.”

3 Crowley, “Eugène Savitzkaya.”

4 Sheringham, “Autobiographical Turning Points,” 4.

5 Sheringham, “Autobiographical Turning Points,” 4.

6 Crowley, “Eugène Savitzkaya,” 148.

7 Sheringham, “Autobiographical Turning Points,” 5.

8 Sheringham, “Autobiographical Turning Points,” 6.

9 Xavier, The Migrant Text.

10 We have published two essays that examine contemporary migrant writing in French. See Edwards, Hogarth, and McCann, “Mobility and Migration”; Edwards, Hogarth, and King, “Mobility across Media.”

11 The editors introducing Kanor’s article “Là d’où je viens” describe her idea of faire savoir as “remembering the forgotten histories of forced and willing immigration” (Kanor, “Là d’où je viens,” 404).

12 De Souza and Murdoch, “Paris and/or Montreal,” 16.

13 Maisier, “Les femmes”; Stevens, “Entre fatalité et contestation”; Loth, “The Natural Elements Unchained.”

14 Hardwick, Childhood.

15 Pineau, Mes quatre femmes, 126. In the absence of published translations, all translations of Pineau’s and Kanor’s texts are our own.

16 Pineau, Mes quatre femmes, 126.

17 Kanor’s work is part of a growing tendency among francophone authors and filmmakers who, possibly out of a desire to reflect the desperate situation in which clandestine migrants attempt to reach Europe from Africa by boat with only limited success, portray frustrated migrants’ experiences at the edge of Europe. Scholarship on works such as Abasse Ndione’s novella Mbëke mi (2008) and Moussa Touré’s 2012 film adaptation of this as La pirogue (Hogarth, “A Liminal Stage”), and on West African music and social media campaigns against travel to Europe (Rofheart, Shifting Perceptions), outlines the evolution of messages on migration inherent in such works. As Toivanen has recently stated, “Paris as a (post)colonial metropolis holds a central place in the francophone African literary imaginary. However, due to the diversification of mobilities in the globalised present, France and Paris are no longer the axiomatic centers in African literary texts representing different mobilities between the two continents” (“Clandestine Migrant Mobility,” 128).

18 The town is first mentioned on page 125, just over a third of the way through the book, after Biram has finally made his long-dreamed-of (clandestine) crossing to Europe.

19 Kanor, Faire l’aventure, 13.

20 Kanor, Faire l’aventure, 364.

21 Kanor, Faire l’aventure, 119.

22 Kanor, Faire l’aventure, 120.

23 This is a play on the title of the classic francophone African novel about migration to Africa from Europe, L’aventure ambigüe (Ambiguous Adventure), by Senegalese author Cheikh Hamidou Kane, which is recalled in the title of Kanor’s novel. In Kane’s novel, the protagonist Samba Diallo leaves his family in Senegal in order to receive an education in Europe before being called back. His bicultural education leaves him confused and he lives in a state of inertia in Senegal, where he dies at a young age.

24 Kanor, Faire l’aventure, 115, 116.

25 Kanor, Faire l’aventure, 166–167.

26 Several studies find that the tradition of teranga (“hospitality”) is practiced among Senegalese migrants in Europe in a similar way as it is within Senegal. Carter’s chapter “Mouridism Touba Turin,” in his work States of Grace, gives a detailed account of the role of the Mourid Islamic Brotherhood in helping immigrants settling in urban centers around Italy by securing them work, food, and housing (55–97). Gasparetti sees this continued tradition of Senegalese migrants offering housing and aid in finding work to their compatriots as an example of “forging and sustaining multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement” (“Relying on Teranga,” 215).

27 Kanor, Faire l’aventure, 126, 320, 146.

28 Persson, “Mes quatre femmes.”

29 Pineau, Mes quatre femmes, 11.

30 Pineau, Mes quatre femmes, 185.

31 In a 2013 interview with Curtius, Kanor reveals that she lived in rural Senegal for many years, and bases much of her depiction of its slow-paced life, so frustrating for the main character, on her experiences there (“Entretien avec Fabienne Kanor,” 224–225). In her 2016 contribution to the journal Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, significantly entitled “Là d’où je viens” (“The place that I come from”), she writes of the documentary-style preparatory work that led to the creation of her 2014 novel: “Je suis allée à Lampedouze, Tenerife, Bamako, Nouadhibou, Nador, Ouarzazate, Madrid, Almeria, Rome, Mbour, Dakar. J’ai marché à la rencontre de ceux qu’on appelle les clandos, les clandestins, avant même de savoir s’ils sont pères, fils, maris, étudiants, diplômés, malades, désespérés, avant même de les laisser parler. Ce n’etait pas assez de prendre quelques photos, alors, j’ai écrit. Et en janvier 2014, le roman est paru sous le titre Faire l’aventure [I went to Lampedusa, Tenerife, Bamako, Nouadhibou, Nador, Ouarzazate, Madrid, Almeria, Rome, Mbour, and Dakar. I searched out those who people call clandos, clandestine migrants, not knowing whether they were fathers, sons, husbands, students, university graduates, sick, desperate, before even letting them speak. It wasn’t enough for me to take a few photos, so I wrote. And in January 2014, the novel came out under the title of Faire l’aventure]” (Kanor, “Là d’où je viens,” 408).

32 Curtius, “Entretien avec Fabienne Kanor,” 224.

33 Kanor, Faire l’aventure, 9.

34 In addition to the aforementioned comments about her documentary work with immigrants, she says of characters in her 2005 novel Humus: “Ils sont l’exacte réplique de ceux de mon père, parti de sa champagne martiniquaise dans les années soixante pour faire sa vie en Grande France, pour faire l’aventure. Ce sont des pieds d’immigré, des pieds qui ont connu la peur, la sueur, la honte, le déni de soi, la servilité, mais aussi le courage, la ténacité, la débrouillardise. J’en ai fait un film, de nos pieds, où j’interroge l’identité des Noirs de France [They are just like my father, who left his Martinican fizz back in the sixties in order to make his life in Metropolitan France, to become an adventurer. These are immigrant feet, feet which have known fear, sweat, shame, self-denial, servility but also courage, tenacity, creative improvisation. I made a film, about these feet, where I ask Black French people about their identity]” (Kanor, “Là d’où je viens,” 407).

35 As De Souza and Murdoch put it, “her childhood experience growing up in a predominantly white city has shaped her subsequent feeling of being constantly in flight, departing for other shores” (“Paris and/or Montreal,” 15).

36 Persson, “Catégorisation éditoriales,” 45.

37 Curtius, “Entretien avec Fabienne Kanor,” 224.

38 Curtius, “Entretien avec Fabienne Kanor,” 225.

39 Kanor, “Sans titre,” 237–241.

40 Kanor, “Sans titre,” 241.

41 Curtius, “Entretien avec Fabienne Kanor,” 223.

42 Kanor, “Sans titre,” 241.