Inventing Antillean Narrative: Maryse Condé and Literary Tradition

Abstract

As a Guadeloupean black woman novelist, Maryse Condé highlights the tensions in Caribbean culture between traditional and modern values, among ethnic groups, and between the sexes. She combines a representative view of an Antillean writer's specific concerns with a postmodern view of literature as multicultural, polymorphous intersection. The opening portion of this essay argues that Condé's personal literary trajectory embodies a general process of identity formation in post colonial literature, one that passes from the alienation of the individual, to the affirmation of collective movements and positive models, and finally, to a critical, playful outlook in which identities are continually posited, criticized and complicated. In the last section, a reading of Condé's recent novel, Traversée de la mangrove, analyzes how the author self-consciously plays on the properties of the novel, much in the way French New Novelists have done. But Condé's work also underscores the importance of references to a given culture, a historical moment. Typical of her generation, Condé's relaxes the barriers between the New Novel's self-consciousness and a social referentiality that stresses the interaction between literature and culture. Concurrently, her reading of gender refuses absolute difference, while nevertheless tracing social inequalities that cause a black woman's plight to exceed her brother's.

Keywords:

• Guadeloupean black woman novelist Keyword: Guadeloupean black woman novelist
• Maryse Condé Keyword: Maryse Condé
• Guadeloupean Keyword: Guadeloupean
• black Keyword: black
• woman Keyword: woman
• Caribbean culture Keyword: Caribbean culture
• traditional Keyword: traditional
• modern values Keyword: modern values
• ethnic groups Keyword: ethnic groups
• sexes Keyword: sexes
• gender Keyword: gender
• Antillean writer Keyword: Antillean writer
• postmodern Keyword: postmodern
• multicultural Keyword: multicultural
• polymorphous Keyword: polymorphous
• Condé Keyword: Condé
• identity Keyword: identity
• post colonial Keyword: post colonial
• Traversée de la mangrove Keyword: Traversée de la mangrove
• literature Keyword: literature
• culture Keyword: culture
• difference Keyword: difference
• social inequalities Keyword: social inequalities
• black woman Keyword: black woman

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