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“Telling Otherwise: Rewriting History, Gender, and Genre in Africa and the African Diaspora” examines counter-discursive postcolonial rewritings. In my first chapter, “Re-Writing the Canon,” I examine two works that rewrite canonical texts from the European tradition, Jean Rhys’s retelling of the life of Jane Eyre’s Bertha in Wide Sargasso Sea and Maryse Condé’s relocation of Wuthering Heights to the Caribbean in La migration des coeurs. In this chapter, I contend that re-writing functions not only as a response, as a “writing back” to the canon, but as a creative appropriation of and critical engagement with the canonical text and its worldview. My second chapter, “Re-Storying the Past,” examines fictional works that rewrite events from the historical past. The works that I study in this chapter are Assia Djebar’s recuperation of Algerian women’s resistance to French colonization in L’amour, la fantasia and Edwidge Danticat’s efforts to reconstruct the 1937 massacre of Haitians under Trujillo in The Farming of Bones. In my third chapter, “Re-Voicing Slavery,” I take for my subject neo-slave narratives that build on and revise the slave narrative genre of the late eighteenth- through early twentieth- centuries. The two works that I examine in this chapter are Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose and the poem sequence Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip, based on the 1781 murder of Africans aboard the slave ship Zong. My fourth chapter, “Re-Membering Gender,” examines texts that foreground the processes of re-writing and re-telling, both thematically and structurally, so as to draw attention to the ways in which discourses and identities are constructed. In their attempts to counter masculinist discourses, these works seek to re-inscribe gender into these discourses, a process of re-membering that engenders a radical deconstruction of fixed notions of identity. The works that I read in this chapter include Daniel Maximin’s L’Isolé soleil, which privileges the feminine and the multiple in opposition to patriarchal notions of single origins and authoritative narrative voices and Maryse Condé’s Traversée de la Mangrove, which rewrites Patrick Chamoiseau’s novel Solibo Magnifique so as to critique the exclusive nature of Caribbean identity in his notion of créolité. / text

This study analyzes the experience of alienation from family and culture as portrayed in the personal narratives of francophone women. The authors appearing in this study are Assia Djebar and Marie Cardinal, from Algeria, Mariama Bâ and Ken Bugul, from Senegal, Marguerite Duras and Kim Lefèvre, from Vietnam, Calixthe Beyala, from Cameroon, Gabrielle Roy, from Canada, and Maryse Condé, from Guadeloupe. Alienation is deconstructed into the domains of blood, money, land, religion, education and history. The authors’ experiences of alienation in each domain are classified according to severity and cultural normativity. The study seeks to determine the manner in which alienation manifests in each domain, and to identify factors which aid or hinder recovery. Alienation in the domain of blood occurs as a result of warfare, illness, racism, ancestral trauma, and the rites of passage of menarche, loss of virginity, and menopause. Money-related alienation is linked to endemic classism, often caused by colonial influence. The authors experienced varying degrees of economic vulnerability to men, depending upon cultural and familial norms. Colonialism, warfare and environmental depending upon cultural and familial norms. Colonialism, warfare and environmental degradation all contribute to alienation in the domain of land. Women were found to be more susceptible to alienation in the domain of religion due to patriarchal religious constructs. In the domain of education, it was found that some alienation is inevitable for all students. Despite its inherent drawbacks, education provides tools for empowerment which are crucial for overcoming alienation. Alienation in the domain of history was found to hinder recovery due to infiltration of past trauma into the present, while empowerment in this domain fosters optimism and future-oriented thinking. Each domain offers opportunities for empowerment, and it is necessary to work within the domains to create a safe haven for recovery. Eight of the nine authors experienced at least a partial recovery from alienation. This was accomplished via cathartic release of negative emotions. Catharsis is achieved by shedding tears, talking, or writing about the negative experiences. The personal narrative was found to be especially helpful in promoting healing both for the author and the reading audience. / Classics and World Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (French)