Nicki Hitchcott

Distinguishing Post-traumatic Growth from Psychological Adjustment Among Rwandan Genocide Survivors

Research into post-traumatic growth describes the potentially transformative and positive impact that highly challenging and traumatic life experiences can have on an individual’s identity, relationships and worldviews. The positive changes individuals identify in the aftermath of challenging circumstances are theorised to be more than fleeting positive illusions, and instead represent enduring character development. However, a central debate in this literature is whether post-traumatic growth is really more than psychological adjustment to a difficult post-trauma reality. In this chapter, we draw upon testimonial data from a sample of survivors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to differentiate these two processes. This population provides a relevant context with which to evaluate this question, as the severity of the genocide made adjustment to post-genocide life a tragic necessity.

Comment Cuisiner Son Mari à L'africaine: Calixthe Beyala's Recipes for Migrant Identity:

Published in 2000 by Albin Michel, Calixthe Beyala’s Comment cuisiner son mari à l’africaine intersperses the fictional account of the narrator Aïssatou’s attempts to seduce her handsome neighbour, Souleymane Bolobolo, with twenty-four of the recipes she prepares as her means of seduction. Many of the recipes are those identified as ‘authentically’ African in cookbooks (generally found in Europe and North America) published in both print and electronic form. Dishes such as crocodile in tchobi sauce and porcupine with wild mango kernels immediately load the text with markers of the exotic, suggesting that the text sets out to reclaim some kind of ‘authentic’ African culture. However, in terms of marketing and readership, Comment cuisiner son mari à l’africaine is very much a French, and more specifically, Parisian cultural product. It is the tenth fictional work published by this best-selling Cameroonian writer who has become something of a media star in France, and who, as I have argued elsewhere, has largely been incorporated French Cultural Studies, 14/2, 211–220 Copyright

“I am Rwandan”: unity and reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda

Drawing on a corpus of ten oral interviews with survivors and perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, we examine how the government’s policy of unity and reconciliation has shaped post-genocide identities and intergroup relations in local Rwandan communities. By focusing on the relationships between individuals and the national post-genocide narrative, we show how the socio-political context in Rwanda influences how people locate themselves and how they ascribe rights and duties to and in relation to others. Specifically, we use positioning theory as an interpretive lens to argue that individuals view adherence to the government’s post-genocide narrative of unity and reconciliation as a moral duty, which is vital to continued political stability and economic development in Rwanda. Our discussion focuses on explaining how the social positioning of the national post-genocide narrative may function to reinforce the ethnic tensions the government has pledged to eradicate.

Women Writers in Francophone Africa

In the rapidly growing field of African literature in French, writing by women has largely been ignored. This book, the first comprehensive study of womens writing in francophone sub-Saharan Africa, redressess the critical imbalance and celebrates the originality of this fascinating new literature.Considering questions of genre and ideology, the author highlights the tension between the individualistic act of writing and the collective tradition of African society - a tension which emerges as the key to each of the texts discussed. Focusing on four major authors - Mariama Ba, Aminata Sow Fall, Werewere Liking and Calixthe Beyala, each with an international reputation - the book uses a feminist approach to consider the duality of the African woman, who is often torn between modernity and tradition. This duality, the author suggests, is reconfigured through fictional writings which provide a space for alternative female subjectivities to emerge.