The first comprehensive survey of its kind in English, this book examines the experience of immigration as represented by authors who moved to France from the Caribbean, the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia after World War II. Essays by expert contributors address the literary productions of different ethnic groups while taking into account generational differences and the effects of class and gender. The focus on immigration, a subject which has moved to the center of many sensitive social and political debates, raises questions related to cultural hybridity, identity politics, border writing, and the status of minority literature within the traditional literary canon, all of which constitute vital areas of research in literary, cultural, and historical studies today.

Included are broad socio-historical chapters on general topics related to immigration, along with chapters providing detailed readings of specific texts and authors. A key objective of the book is to consider the ways in which literary texts by authors of immigrant origin explore what it means to be French, and how these works shape debates about French national and cultural identity. The contributors discuss such issues as cultural hybridity, linguistic identity, and the textualization and theorization of otherness.

This is the first comprehensive study in English of the post-war literature of immigration in Quebec. It examines the literary representation of immigration as it relates to those who have moved to Quebec from such areas as the Caribbean, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. Through this focus on immigration, the essays raise a series of questions related to gender, cultural pluralism, identity politics, and narrative forms. One of the key objectives is to consider the ways in which the literary texts portray the concept of immigrant culture and shape debates about Quebec's national and cultural identity. The book explores how these texts re-imagine and redefine problematic issues related to the immigrant experience. Textualizing the Immigrant Experience in Contemporary Quebec by Patrice J. Proulx and Susan Ireland is a cross-disciplinary work that will be of interest to scholars of French and francophone literature, cultural studies, the history of immigration, Canadian studies, and the literature of exile. The essays in this volume examine the ways in which the appearance of this contemporary corpus has led to a modification of critical categories, as scholars have sought ways to conceptualize this new body of literature.