Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile explores the multiple aspects of exile, displacement, mobility, and identity as expressed in contemporary autofictional work written in French by women writers from across the francophone world. Drawing on postcolonial theory, gender theory, and autobiographical theory, the book analyses narratives of exile by six authors who are shaped by their multiple locales of attachment: Kim Lefevre (Vietnam/France), Gisele Pineau (Guadeloupe/mainland France), Nina Bouraoui (Algeria/France), Michele Rakotoson (Madagascar/France), Veronique Tadjo (Cote d'Ivoire/France), and Abla Farhoud (Lebanon/Quebec). In this way, the book argues that the French colonial past continues to mould female articulations of mobility and identity in the postcolonial present. Responding to gaps in the critical discourse of exile, namely gender, this book brings genre in both its forms - gender and literary genre - to bear on narratives of exile, arguing that the reconceptualization of categories of mobility occurs specifically in women's autofictional writing. The six authors complicate discussions of exile as they are highly mobile, hybrid subjects. This rootless existence, however, often renders them alienated and 'out of place'. While ensuring not to trivialize the very real difficulties faced by those whose exile is not a matter of choice, the book argues that the six authors experience their hybridity as both a literal and a metaphorical exile, a source of both creativity and trauma.

As one of the most prominent voices from and about the French Caribbean, Gisele Pineau has garnered significant scholarly attention; however, this interest has culminated in precious few volumes devoted entirely to the author and her work. In response to this lack of in-depth critical attention, Reimagining Resistance in Gisele Pineau's Works brings together a range of perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic and across the Pacific to explore the unique ways in which Gisele Pineau's works redefine the concept of resistance, particularly as it relates to gender, race, history, and Antillean identity. As this volume ultimately demonstrates, resistance holds up a mirror to the political, economic, and cultural forces that have shaped the past, construct the present, and build the future. It argues that Pineau's characters open the narrative frame for reading them and move us beyond the categories of the wholly defiant or the inherently complicit. Above all, as they invite us to reimagine resistance, they expose our expectations and hopefully shift our understanding about what it means to rise and to fall in a world we seek to call our own.

Queer(y)ing Bodily Norms in Francophone Culture questions how a wide selection of restrictive norms come to bear on the body, through a close analysis of a range of texts, media and genres originating from across the francophone world and spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Each essay troubles hegemonic, monolithic perceptions and portrayals of racial, class, gender, sexual and/or national identity, rethinking bodily norms as portrayed in literature, film, theatre and digital media specifically from a queer and querying perspective. The volume thus takes "queer(y)ing" as its guiding methodology, an approach to culture and society which examines, questions and challenges normativity in all of its guises. The term "queer(y)ing" retains the celebratory tone of the term "queer" but avoids appropriating the identity of the LGBTQ+ community, a group which remains marginalized to this day. The publication reveals that evaluating the bodily norms depicted in francophone culture through a queer and querying lens allows us to fragment often oppressive and restrictive norms, and ultimately transform them.