Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond explores the Beur/banlieue literary and cultural field from its beginnings in the 1980s to the present. It examines a set of postcolonial Bildungsroman novels by Azouz Begag, Farida Belghoul, Leila Sebbar, Said Mohamed, Rachid Djaidani, and Mohamed Razane. In these novels, the central characters are authors who struggle to find self-identity and a place in the world through writing and authorship. The book thus explores the different ways all these novels relate the process of "becoming" to the process of writing. Neither is straightforward as the author-characters struggle to put their lives into words, settle upon a genre of writing, and adopt an authorial persona. Each chapter of Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond focuses on a given author's own relationship to writing before assessing his or her use of the author-character as a proxy. In so doing, the study as a whole explores a set of literary questions (genre, textual authority, reception) and engages them against the backdrop of socio-cultural challenges facing contemporary French society. These include debates on education, cultural literacy, diversity and equal opportunity, and the "banlieue" environment. Finally, it argues in relation to the authors and novels in question for the particular relevance of "rooted and vernacular" cosmopolitanism, which suggests both that exploration of the world must begin at home and that stories are crucial for such explorations.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays unites researchers from many divergent fields in a common effort to explore the complexity, diversity, and paradoxes of French Harki literature. Given the growing body of literature written by, for, and about the Harkis, this project begins to fill a significant research gap. Although French Harki literature continues to evolve and diversify with each passing day, this book represents the first systematic attempt to delineate the significance of this emerging field within the larger context of Francophone literature, migration studies, and diaspora studies. Furthermore, the invaluable contributions of noted historians which open the volume offer an essential theoretical framework which places Harki literature in its appropriate historical context on both sides of the Mediterranean. As the title of this collection unequivocally implies, this volume was intentionally designed to foster meaningful collaboration with scholars from disciplines such as French/Francophone literature, history, anthropology, and sociology in a common effort to create intellectually rigorous essays which are also accessible to a broad audience. A Practical Guide to French Harki Literature is a much-needed point of departure that strives to encourage other researchers to contribute to the conversation regarding the past and present repercussions of the construction of the social group known as the Harkis.

Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond explores the Beur/banlieue literary and cultural field from its beginnings in the 1980s to the present. It examines a set of postcolonial Bildungsroman novels by Azouz Begag, Farida Belghoul, Leila Sebbar, Said Mohamed, Rachid Djaidani, and Mohamed Razane. In these novels, the central characters are authors who struggle to find self-identity and a place in the world through writing and authorship. The book thus explores the different ways all these novels relate the process of "becoming" to the process of writing. Neither is straightforward as the author-characters struggle to put their lives into words, settle upon a genre of writing, and adopt an authorial persona. Each chapter of Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond focuses on a given author's own relationship to writing before assessing his or her use of the author-character as a proxy. In so doing, the study as a whole explores a set of literary questions (genre, textual authority, reception) and engages them against the backdrop of socio-cultural challenges facing contemporary French society. These include debates on education, cultural literacy, diversity and equal opportunity, and the "banlieue" environment. Finally, it argues in relation to the authors and novels in question for the particular relevance of "rooted and vernacular" cosmopolitanism, which suggests both that exploration of the world must begin at home and that stories are crucial for such explorations.

Post-Migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France offers a critical assessment of the ways in which French writers, filmmakers, musicians and other artists descended from immigrants from former colonial territories bring their specificity to bear on the bounds and applicability of French republicanism, "Frenchness" and national identity, and contemporary cultural production in France. In mobilizing a range of approaches and methodologies pertinent to their specialist fields of inquiry, contributors to this volume share in the common objective of elucidating the cultural productions of what we are calling post-migratory (second- and third-generation) postcolonial minorities. The volume provides a lens through which to query the dimensions of postcoloniality and transnationalism in relation to post-migratory postcolonial minorities in France and identifies points of convergence and conversation among them in the range of their cultural production. The cultural practitioners considered query traditional French high culture and its pathways and institutions; some emerge as autodidacts, introducing new forms of authorship and activism; they inflect French cultural production with different 'accents', some experimental and even avant-garde in nature. As the volume contributors show, though post-migratory postcolonial minorities sometimes express dis-settlement, they also provide an incisive view of social identities in France today and their own compelling visions for the future.