Susan Ireland

Negotiating New Identities in Québec's écriture migrante

Canada has long been known as a country of immigrants, and an examination of the demographics of Québec provides a salient example of the dramatic increase in the number of immigrants living in the country, especially since World War II. In their illuminating discussion of questions of language, citizenship, and identity in this province, Leigh Oakes and Jane Warren rightfully observe that ‘‘As elsewhere, immigration to Québec has often tended to coincide with economic, political or social upheaval in countries of origin’’ (132). These diverse factors are reflected in the various waves of immigration to Québec— Jews from Eastern Europe arrived in the first part of the twentieth century, Italians in the 1940s and 50s, Vietnamese refugees and Haitians fleeing the Duvalier regime in the 1960s and 70s, and, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Algerians seeking asylum because of the civil war in their homeland. In fact, recent statistics (2004) reveal that record numbers of immigrants continue to settle in Québec, with the majority coming from China, Pakistan, India, and the francophone countries of Morocco, Romania, Haiti, Lebanon, and France (Oakes and Warren 133–134). This large influx of immigrants coincided with Québec’s transition from a primarily rural culture to an industrialized urban society. From the beginning, most newcomers have chosen to settle in Montreal, and, in 2004, 86% percent of them came to this metropolitan region (Oakes and Warren 134). The changing nature of the population of Québec has inevitably led to a rethinking of the traditional Canadian notion of two founding peoples and of the corresponding concept of the two solitudes they represent (a notion popularized by Hugh MacLennan’s 1945 novel Two Solitudes). Michael Greenstein uses the expression ‘‘third solitude’’ (15) to describe the sense of exile and

Facing the Ghosts of the Past in Dalila Kerchouche's Mon père, ce harki and Zahia Rahmani's Moze

A foundational event for the Algerian nation, the 1954–1962 war of independence also constituted a traumatic period in France’s past. As many historians have observed, painful memories of the war were for many years marked by silence and repression on both sides of the Mediterranean, memories that include the treatment of the harkis. Indeed, the situation of the harkis, which has been described as ‘‘le tabou des tabous’’ (Hamoumou 26), has been one of the last aspects of the war to be openly addressed. The past few years have, however, seen the publication of a significant number of historical and literary works which have begun to fill what Mohand Hamoumou calls ‘‘un trou de mémoire franco-algérien’’ (25). These texts, which bring the plight of the harkis to the fore, constitute important counter-narratives that contest the dominant accounts of the war circulating in France and Algeria, and take their place alongside the parallel, often competing, memories of other groups such as the pieds-noirs, French soldiers, and the Front de Libération Nationale. In the domain of literature, a series of recent autobiographical narratives attests to the need to examine the legacies of the war and provides an interesting example of the way in which ‘‘the testimonial articulation of memory becomes a site of potential political engagement’’ (Rothberg 162). As counter-narratives, these testimonial works have several characteristics in common. First, they give voice to a strong desire to break the silence surrounding the fate of the harkis. As the protagonist in Zahia Rahmani’s Moze puts it, ‘‘Ils l’auront quand même,

Representations of the Banlieues in the contemporary Marseillais Polar

It has often been observed that the topography of the polar reflects the social and political concerns of its day. Since the world of the polar is also a “fundamentally urban” one (Reuter 66), it is not surprising that the banlieues occupy a prominent position in many recent works. Indeed, writers such as Jean-Claude Izzo point to the link between fiction and reality: “since it is impossible for me to remain indifferent to what I read in the newspapers every day, my story inevitably takes the path of reality” (Solea, author’s note). Although most literary and cinematic works dealing with the banlieues are set in Paris, a significant number of works depicting the quartiers nord of Marseille have appeared in recent years. As Mireille Rosello has observed, many of these works portray a multiracial, multiethnic Marseilles whose hybrid origins are inscribed in the foundational myth of the city, the marriage of “the Marseillais Adam-and-Eve” (29), the Greek sailor Protis and Gyptis, the daughter of the local king. The representation of the banlieues of Marseilles in a series of polars published between 1995 and 2002 forms part of this celebration of the multicultural nature of the city, as the authors use the conventions of detective fiction to address issues related to the quartiers nord. Associating the banlieues with crime is not a new phenomenon: the notion that the “immigrant” suburbs constitute a site of violence recurs frequently in both media reports and in novels by authors of immigrant origin, the type of crime portrayed depending on the perspective of the writer. Sensationalist accounts of suburban confrontations pitting the forces of order against the disorder symbolized by the banlieues routinely appear in the media and have contributed to the creation of a “geography of fear” (Body-Gendrot 175) in which fear of the Other is configured in spatial terms. This configuration, which equates the banlieues with delinquency and racial conflict, reinforces the idea that these areas are dangerous places for outsiders, and the common assumption that “banlieues immigration Arabs” (Césari 68) designates the immigrant population in particular as the source of the problem. Authors of immigrant origin provide an alternative vision of the banlieues,

Redefining the Self: Explorations of Aging in Michèle Sarde’s Constance et la cinquantaine and Nancy Huston’s Dolce agonia

In their chapter, Susan Ireland and Patrice Proulx offer a comparative analysis of Nancy Huston’s Dolce agonia and Michele Sarde’s Constance et la cinquantaine, two works that center on middle-aged and elderly characters and that address complex issues related to aging such as physical and mental decline. These novels offer nuanced depictions of the aging female body and juxtapose different types of “decline” and “progress” narratives. Examining the ways in which the female protagonists redefine their identity through shared reflections on the process of aging, Ireland and Proulx also highlight the important role played by women’s supportive and lasting friendships in contributing to this vital redefinition of the aging self.

Vísíons of Islam ín Contemporary Algerían Fictíon Wrítten ín French

Islamist movements began to play a major role in the political arena in Algeria in the 1980s, and when a multiparty system was introduced in 1989, several Islamist parties including the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) were legally recognized and competed in local and national elections. Since the cancellation of the legislative elections and the outlawing of the FIS in 1992, however, the country has been engulfed in a cycle of terrorism and counterterrorism that has claimed over a hundred thou-