Life Writing and Transcultural Youth in Contemporary France: Azouz Begag, Maryam Madjidi, and Laura Alcoba

Acknowledgements
About the Book
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: Blended Stories
	Introduction
	Transculturality Today
	Translingual Turns: The Irruption of Other Languages
	Transpersonal Life Writing: Intersecting Selves and Experiences
	Autobiography as a (Potentially) Wide-Ranging Practice
	The Ambiguity of Autofiction: A Fruitful Ground for Transcultural Self-Expression
	Multicultural France 2000–2023, a Brief Overview
	Cultural Blending and Social Critique in Recent Music and Film
	Points of Departure
	References
Chapter 2: Azouz Begag: Questions of Home in a French Writer of Algerian Descent
	Introduction
		Franco-Algerian and Franco-Maghrebi Relations: Representation, Repression, Reclamation
		Writing North African Belonging in France
		A Broad Approach to Life Writing
	Le Gone Du Chaâba: Between the Local and the Foreign
	Salam Ouessant and Traces of Algeria: Generational Distance, Exile, and Memoralgia
		Assorted Franco-Algérianités
		What Divides and What Connects: Meditations on Bread and Doubles
		Hospitality, Homecomings, and the Question of Transmission
	L’Arbre ou la Maison: Being a Bi
		Splits in the Self, and the Draw of Nostalgia
		Symbols and Allegories
		Samy and His Father: The Anger of the Subjugated
		Techniques of Layering and Conflation
		Attitudes to France and French, and the Celebration of Sabir
		Dislocations and Literary Connections
	References
Chapter 3: Maryam Madjidi: Multiple Belongings, Authenticity, and the Dilemmas of Self-Acceptance
	Introduction
		Iranian Ties of Past and Present
		Madjidi’s Autofictional and Transpersonal Life Writing
		Embodied Imagery of Selfhood: Photography, Text, Video, Theatre
	Marx et la Poupée: Towards an Acceptance of the Wobbly Self
		Polysemic Motifs, and Tiny Shards of Intense Memory and Pain
		Twists and Turns: Shifts of Form, Perspective, and Addressee
		Homage, Anger, and the Need to Bear Witness
		The Growth of Authenticity
		The Sustenance and Comfort of the Well-Told Tale
	Pour que je M’aime Encore: Finding Home in the Margins
		Prisons of Perception and of Social Realities
		Obstacles of Social Disadvantage and Elitist Educational Pressure Cookers
		Space Travel
		A Biting Humour
		Subverting Stereotypes
	References
Chapter 4: Laura Alcoba’s Autofictional Memorials of Youth
	Introduction
		Argentina’s Legacy of Terror
		An Autofictional Web in Print and Image, and Its Internet Extensions
	Les Rives de la mer douce: An Autobiographical Phototext
	Manèges: Doubling Back on the Self
		Loss, Absence, and Traces
		Secrets and Speculation
		A Tainted Childhood
	Le Bleu des abeilles: A Hall of Mirrors
		Constructed Images of Selfhood
		Knitting the Self Through Memory and Language: From Chaos to a Certain Order
		The Dynamics of French and Spanish
		Displacement, Doubleness, Disappearance
		The Red, White, and Blue of Identity
	La Danse de l’araignée: Extending the Web
		Languages and Self-Construction
		Echoes of Argentina and the Presence of an Absence
	Par la forêt: Beyond the Autobiographical “Trilogy”
		Repetition and Fractures of Selfhood
		Polyphony, Colour, and Legend
		Creating, Healing, and Connecting
	References
Chapter 5: Creating Places to Inhabit: “In-between” Self-Expression in France
	Introduction: Transnational, Transcultural, Translingual, and Postcolonial Intersections
	Transmemorial Resonances and the Personal Political
	Gendered and General Social Critique
	Multiple Connections, Assorted Media, Diverse Belongings
	Questioning, Reframing, and Performing Identities
	Dialogic Relationships: The Writer-Reader Bond
	Assertions of the Plurilingual Self
	Acts of Transculturalism
	Personal Manifestations of Transculturated Frenchness
	References
Index