Draws scholarly attention to a neglected body of récits d’enfance
by contemporary best-selling, prize-winning Francophone Caribbean
authors: Chamoiseau, Condé, Confiant, Laferrière (who are also
available in English)
Taps into debates around slavery and colonialism both in France and
at a global level (the UNESCO project La Route de l’esclave, the
Comité devoir de mémoire, the loi Taubira and the Comité pour la
mémoire de l’esclavage)
Provides a well-defined methodology with which to approach the
récit d’enfance, with the potential to generate new readings of
Francophone postcolonial literature focusing on childhood, from
areas such as Algeria (Leïla Sebbar), Sub-Saharan Africa (Camara
Laye), Reunion (Jean-Jacques Martial) and extending to North
African Francophone literature and the Haitian diaspora in North
America, particularly Quebec (Emile Ollivier)
Louise Hardwick is a Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Birmingham. She specializes in postcolonial literature and film, particularly from the Francophone Caribbean and its diaspora.
Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean is the first book-length study of a remarkable literary phenomenon that emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century in the French Antilles and Haiti - the autobiographical narrative. Louise Hardwick expertly analyses this relatively understudied genre which uses childhood narrative in as much a politically as an aesthetically subversive manner. Her clear, meticulous and informed study reveals the ways in which these narratives of childhood, driven by a devoir de memoire, relate individual memory to collective identity. This is a welcome critical work that makes a major contribution to francophone as well as to postcolonial literary studies. A subgenre of autobiography, the Caribbean childhood memoir finds in Louise Hardwick a comprehensive and ambitious critic. She surveys the field of francophone writing across the Caribbean and its American diasporas, and she provides a pedagogically useful approach that will become a valuable reference for anyone interested in processes of identity formation. Writers living in multicultural and multiracial contexts bear witness to the colonial deformation of racial identity and to the postcolonial transformation of mentalities. Their recits d'enfance provide an intimate look at uncomfortable social realities that compel the reader's curiosity, and also elicit strong affective responses by creating empathy for the predicament of young subjects whose loss of innocence is documented in what Hardwick terms the "scenes of recognition" that run through most of the texts selected. (The main authors are Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphael Confiant, Maryse Conde, Daniel Maximin, Gisele Pineau and Dany Laferriere, discussed both in relation to many others from the region and in terms of their intertextual echoes with a writer like Proust.) These "scenes of recognition" are moments that reveal the colonial silencing of the past with which black family members actually become complicit because they would prefer to shield their young from the tragic history of slavery lived as a shameful trauma by its victims and descendants. Using this productive concept of the "scene", Hardwick proceeds methodically and unpacks the historical, social and political conditions that have enabled the flourishing of the genre of childhood autobiography in the 1990s and after. She does subtle close readings and makes judicious use of a wide range of analytical models provided by psychoanalysis (Lacan, Fanon, Gracchus), postcolonialism (Bhabha, Spivak), gender theory (Irigaray, bell hooks) and formal theories of autobiography (Lejeune's pact). She thus conclusively demonstrates the originality and diversity of the writers' treatment of their subject matter, setting apart, for example, a Haitian-Canadian-Floridian such as Laferriere from the French citizens of the DOMs whose engagement with history and psychological repression are perforce of a different nature. In addition, her focus on the power of landscapes and the ferocity of climatic events rounds out a study that is a pleasure to read. I regret, however, that the ubiquitous Bhabha is the only theorist of hybridity who is invoked, whereas linguists, anthropologists and sociologists of creolization would have much more to add to this conversation. Stuart Hall's approach to hybridity would have been relevant, as would de Certeau's notion of subversion, Joan Dayan's contributions to race discourse, and H. L. Gates Jr's concept of "signifying" which can complicate in interesting ways the notion of recognition. There also seems to be a contradiction in that Hardwick first endorses the inadequacy of language to represent the trauma of the Middle Passage, as in the discussion of the grandmother's speech in Gisele Pineau's L'Exil selon Julia (155), but later suggests that the role of literature, particularly in the Haitian contexts of violence and repression, "is to find ways to express unpalatable truths" (180) such as the destruction wielded by the Duvalier dictatorship. An alternative mode of representation, literature communicates through its poetics and potentialities what historiography cannot, as readers of Toni Morrison know. A longer discussion of literariness would have been useful, especially in relation to the "documentary" aspect of memoir genre and to the ethics and poetics of intimacy, such as in Laferriere's invocation of his "tranquil" childhood lived under dictatorship but in the protective presence of his grandmother in L'Odeur du cafe. These theoretical concerns aside, this is a welcome and important contribution to both genre studies and francophone postcolonial criticism. Louise Hardwick's meticulous research, balanced approach and lucid prose merit serious consideration from specialists of the region. ... a study that is a pleasure to read ... Hardwick's meticulous research, balanced approach and lucid prose merit serious consideration from specialists of the region. Louise Hardwick's study considers the genre of the francophone Caribbean childhood memoir, or recit d'enfance, which rose to prominence during the 1990s but, as the author shows in Chapter 1, actually builds on century-long literary traditions in Antillean fiction of writing both autobiographically and about childhood. Although, in generic terms, the development of this tradition is blurred around the edges, with poetry, prose, and nonfiction contributing towards the growth of literary interest in the francophone Caribbean childhood, the problem of genre remains fundamental to Hardwick's study, and a number of theoretical perspectives, including Philippe Lejeune's Le Pacte autobiographique (1975) and Serge Doubrovsky's concept of 'autofiction', are productively brought to bear on the central corpus. The book's principal strength lies in its close reading of the memoirs themselves: Patrick Chamoiseau's Une enfance creole (1990), Raphael Confiant's Ravines du devant-jour (1993) and Le Cahier de romances (2000), Maryse Condes Le Coeur a rire et a pleurer (1999), Daniel Maximin's Tu, c'est l'enfance (2004), Gisele Pineau's L'Exil selon Julia (1996), and two volumes of Haitian-born Dany Laferriere's Autobiographie americaine (1991, 1997). Hardwick addresses a number of recurrent postcolonial problems alongside literary questions of genre and the 'friction between memory and imagination' (p. 68), identified as one of the central tenets of the recit d'enfance. These include colonial alienation, considered through the theoretical lens of Frantz Fanon's Peau noire, masques blancs (1952); the unequal linguistic position of Creole in the Caribbean; and race, socioethnic categorization, and me'tissage. A final chapter deals with the Caribbean family, including the recurrent tropes of the absent father, and the grandmother as primary carer of the child. As Hardwick notes, these texts share many commonalities with their anglophone Caribbean counterparts, and the analysis could be extended productively within a regional comparative framework, as it is already enriched by the inclusion of a Haitian author. Running throughout Hardwick's analysis of this Caribbean corpus is the enduring shadow of slavery and the plantation past. This manifests itself variously through haunting scenarios such as the role-played abuse of the child narrator in Conde's Le Coeur a rire et a pleurer, adults' silence, and, much more rarely, their attempts to explain the inexplicable. Through her sustained critical attention to the pivotal 'scene of recognition', or moment of realization of the slave past that silently surrounds the world of the young protagonists, Hardwick shows that this unspoken collective trauma has a fundamental impact on narrative renditions of Caribbean childhoods. While childhood memoirs are very often viewed as narratives that focus on the individual coming-of-age story, Hardwick offers new insight into the collective character of francophone recits d'enfance by Caribbean authors, demonstrating persuasively that the ongoing narrative impact of slavery cannot be elided. Hardwick offers new insight into the collective character of francophone recits d'enfance by Caribbean authors, demonstrating persuasively that the ongoing narrative impact of slavery cannot be elided. In an impressive series of close readings, Louise Hardwick analyses the genre of autobiographical childhood narratives in Francophone Caribbean Literature. Hardwick characterizes the genre as a specific Francophone recits d'enfance and explains that it corresponds to a major literary turn: since the beginning of the 90s, French editors have extensively promoted Caribbean autobiographic novels dealing with childhood. So Hardwick thoroughly explores the works of successful writers such as, Patrick Chamoiseau, Raphael Confiant, Maryse Conde, Dany Laferriere Daniel Maximim or Gisele Pineau. But not only the younger generation is scrutinized. In delineating the genre's emergence, and adding poetry works to her corpus, Hardwick offers fresh perspectives on Aime Cesaire, Leon Gontran Damas, Saint-John Perse or Joseph Zobel. In so doing, she also excavates less known novels by Mayotte Capecia, Clement Richer, Francoise Ega, and Maurice Virassamy. However, Hardwick goes further, showing that the genre is much more than an editorial phenomenon. She identifies an important strategic device: at the core of the recits d'enfance lies what she defines as the scene of recognition. In the typical case, the young narrator - and budding writer - asks a relative a question about slavery. Whether the parents inform the child or not, the problematic memory of slavery is brought to the fore. Based on Frantz Fanon's reading of recognition, this heuristic model is fruitfully confronted to the specific works of recits d'enfance's corpus and Hardwick reveals how this childhood inquiry moulds the writers' aesthetics. This is one of the reasons that these recits d'enfance stand as a crucial object for critical studies. Many other original facets enrich the book's contribution to the field of Caribbean studies. In considering the English canon, Hardwick provides rare and useful comparative overviews. In this way, she uncovers connections between the Harlem Renaissance and the emergence of Francophone Caribbean childhood narratives. Moreover, the detailed close readings avoid hasty generalizations, and the singularity of independent Haiti - through Laferriere's oeuvre - is rightfully pointed out. Last, but not least, Hardwick examines the gender specificities of the recits d'enfance, showing how the question of gender is deeply intermingled with the reshaping of slave memory and the formation of a literary style. These innovative readings constitute the volume's tour de force: in inaugurating the critical field of recits d'enfance studies, it renews our approaches to Francophone Caribbean literature in general. In an impressive series of close readings, Louise Hardwick analyses the genre of autobiographical childhood narratives ... These innovative readings constitute the volume's tour de force: in inaugurating the critical field of recits d'enfance studies, it renews our approaches to Francophone Caribbean literature in general. Louise Hardwick's excellent study is a most welcome contribution to the field ... With its beautiful style and pedagogical structure, it is a didactic masterpiece. One of the seminal books in French Caribbean literature is Joseph Zobel's Rue Case Negres from 1950. The book, which was turned into a film in 1983 by Martinican director Euzhan Palcy, tells the story of how a child growing up on the countryside manages, by means of education, to escape a world of the cane fields and neo-slavery. Despite the success of Zobel's story and its impact on Francophone Caribbean writers, the genre of autobiography and childhood stories has received relatively little critical attention. Louise Hardwick's excellent study Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean is therefore a most welcome contribution to the field. Taking as a point of departure the observation that childhood narratives have reemerged on the French Caribbean literary scene since the 1990s, Hardwick's study encompasses both autobiography and childhood narratives in French recits d'enfance. In the introduction she defines and discusses these concepts and concludes that the French Caribbean recit d'enfance borders on autobiography but cannot be reduced to this genre. Rather, this particular form comes close to Serge Doubrovsky's notion of autofiction. However, according to Hardwick not even the broad term of autofiction can do full justice to the books she studies, especially considering the particular (post) colonial context in which they were written. Here, the story of childhood is at once both individual and collective, but more importantly Hardwick is particularly interested in childhood stories, not life narratives. Hardwick argues that although the French Caribbean does not have the same history of autobiographical narratives as we find in the Anglophone Caribbean and in North America, where the slave narrative constitutes a solid genre, there is indeed another tradition of autobiographical writing that has, as she points out on numerous occasions, passed unnoticed to critics. The first chapter lays out the groundwork for this tradition. Here Hardwick gives the reader a sound and interesting background to the 1990s autobiographical boom as she sheds light on a number of marginal writers, thereby contributing to the rewriting of Caribbean literary history. As many critics, including myself, have pointed out, for far too long the writing of the French Caribbean history of literature has focused on a few major authors, which has resulted in an erroneous linear understanding of the development of Caribbean literature, starting from negritude, via antillanite and ending with creolite (What comes after? Nobody knows). Hardwick shows that the childhood topos has been persistent in writings from the islands and has appeared in many forms in the writings of marginal as well as established authors. For instance, the focus on childhood narratives highlights an area of literature where Glissant has not had a major impact on the generation of authors who started publishing in the 1980s. Hardwick does indeed talk about the childhood topos in some of Glissant's texts, but her reading makes it clear that this particular phenomenon plays a minor part in his writing and thinking (indeed, the autobiographical impulse was not his focus). However, it is noteworthy that whereas Hardwick mentions La Lezarde, there is not a single line on Soleil de la conscience or on later theoretical texts such as La Cohee du Lamentin, where the exact same childhood scenes present in La Lezard reappears. In the following chapters, Hardwick gives an impressive analysis of the genre of recit d'enfance with a particular focus on what Hardwick designates as the "post-1990s" starting with Martinican authors Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphael Confiant, then going via Maryse Conde to Daniel Maximin and Gisele Pineau, all three from Guadeloupe, to end with Haitian author Dany Laferriere, recently elected to the French Academy. The approach chosen for each author is well thought-out, and by letting one author represent a particular problem tied to the genre, she smoothly covers the main aspects of the recit d'enfance. Hardwick looks at Chamoiseau's Chemin d'ecole series through the prism of mimicry and schooling. She addresses the question of ethnicity through Confiant's books. Conde's Le Coeur a rire et a pleurer is the platform for questioning the notion of alienation, and Pineau and Maximin represent a geopoetic approach to childhood through the perspective of exile. Dany Laferriere is the only Haitian writer examined, and seeing that the Haitian context differs radically from that of Guadeloupe and Martinique, his books allow for further problematisation of the genre, as Hardwick shows how his narratives are a way to address the development of Haiti from the 1970s onwards. These approaches underscore Hardwick's main point, namely, that childhood narratives reflect and deepen other concerns that preoccupy the authors examined and pervade Antillean literature. A theme that spans all of the authors studied is the intricate question of the silenced and shameful past, a recurrent theme in Antillean writing (both fictional and factious) and how it resurfaces in the life and formation of individuals. She examines a passage from Le Coeur a rire et a pleurer, where young Maryse Conde plays with a white girl who, during a role game that goes a bit too far, uses race to excuse her cruel behavior toward the narrator: she beats little Maryse because the girl is white and Maryse is black. This event marks the first time the young narrator is confronted with slavery and racism, questions that have been carefully contained by her parents. From another angle, reading Maximin and Pineau, Hardwick shows the importance of geography and landscape for remembrance, connecting individual destiny with that of a community. The water metaphor, for example, presents the middle passage as a giant deadly womb rather than a place of rebirth; it is a haunted space. On the other side of the spectrum, Hardwick explores how Haitian author Laferriere uses personal memory to restore Haiti's dignity. The movement in Laferriere's childhood narrative is thus the inverse of that which can be observed in Pineau and Maximin, but it still concerns finding ways to connect the destiny of the individual with the collectivity. In fact, all of the texts examined are, in one way or another, about finding different mediations between individual and collective memory, about the tensions between the je and the nous. Hardwick offers literary readings of this dilemma and avoids theorizing, which is quite liberating, considering that the French Caribbean has been over-theorized at the expense of close readings and other, more literary approaches. Nevertheless, in regards to the tension between the je and the nous, I missed discussion about the fact that so many women write the autobiographies of their grandmothers or of other people in the family. Pineau's L'Exil selon Julia uses this strategy, but Hardwick does not go very far in her comments about writing about the self via others. This is worth noting since the strategy has been used by many Caribbean women. Look, for instance, at Edwidge Danticat's amazing autobiography of her uncle, Brother I'm Dying, or Maryse Conde's Victorine les saveurs et les mots, to name a few. The book's broad approach, covering the French Caribbean from the overseas departments to independent Haiti, is informative and rich; Hardwick gains a lot from comparisons and parallel readings and manages to show the existence of a particular genre somewhere in between childhood memoires and autobiography that seems specific to the French Caribbean. The only down side to such a wide perspective is, of course, that sometimes details slip by in the readings. Some elements are left uncommented, such as the question of the formation of a sexual identity in Chamosieau's last book or the question of publishing policies. Moreover, it would have been interesting to read a discussion about the implications of the Gallimard series Haute enfance and about the fact that Conde was asked by her editor to write about her grandmother. Hardwick follows a broad chronological structure, where each author is treated one at a time. So while Hardwick's clear style and structure make this book very pleasant to read, some points could have been better addressed with another, less direct approach. And in fact, the last chapter breaks with the general structure and addresses the topic using a more thematic approach. The chapter is devoted to the question of gender and the representation of parents, notably the female figure of the mother and grandmother along with myths of the woman as a poteau-mitan and a femme-matador. This chapter is more critical than the others but remains very accessible and devoid of theoretical complications. As the chapter deals with gender, it would have been interesting to see an analysis of gender issues in relation to the formation of the Caribbean child since the discovery of the opposite sex is central, for example, in Chamoiseau's last recit d'enfance, and it plays a notable part in Conde's last autobiography, published in 2012. But Hardwick's focus is mainly childhood itself, meaning that the seed of sexuality has not yet started to grow, so the fine line of passage between childhood and adolescence falls outside of her scope. Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean is a remarkable study, and my criticism concerns details. Hardwick's goes deep into some areas and, in others, she illuminates paths that may be pursued by future research within the field of Francophone Caribbean studies. Also, she has her reasons for choosing a more straightforward approach, and this choice will make the book very useful for courses in Francophone literature. With its beautiful style and pedagogical structure, it is a didactic masterpiece. Also, I should add that the broad scope will appeal to a wide audience. With this solid study of a literary genre proper to the French Caribbean in its extended sense, Liverpool University Press asserts its position as one of the leading publishing houses in the field, combining publications with more theoretical profiles, such as Nick Nesbitt's Caribbean Critique (2013), and thorough literary studies such as Hardwick's book. Hardwick's discussion of intertextuality-both among writers and self-referential-and her contextualization of the childhood memoirs within their authors' larger oeuvre are most illuminating...Hardwick's book constitutes a significant contribution to Francophone Caribbean literary criticism. This well-researched and cogently written study makes a convincing argument for the significance of the recit d'enfance in discussions about Francophone Caribbean literature.
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