Two female Francophone characters, Black and Indigenous: from the loss of voice and identity to the reconstruction of their ancestral roots in Maria Campbell's Halfbreed (1973) and Ken Bugul's Le Baobab fou (1982).
Date
2025-01-31
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
0009-0008-3478-6810
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
As part of this dissertation, I propose to offer a comparative study of two works in which the main female characters, who are also the narrators, face an identity crisis that gives rise to a strong desire for self-reconstruction associated with the need to (re)discover their ancestral roots: Le baobab fou (1982) by the Senegalese novelist Ken Bugul, whose real name is Mariétou Mbaye Biléoma, and Halfbreed (1973) by Maria Campbell, an author born in the Canadian Prairies. More specifically, the two writers present the intimate journey of a Black or Indigenous woman who, in the face of social prejudice, turns to her childhood, her primitive sources, and her writing to delve into her origins. This work will begin by examining the loss of voice and self-worth experienced by the two protagonists before focusing on the strategies that each of them uses to free herself from her oppression and rebuild her identity.
Description
Keywords
Race, Metis, Discrimination
Citation
Degree
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Department
Languages, Literatures, and Cultural Studies
Program
Languages