I am a bibliophile myself. I have long loved the smell of musty books, probably thanks to my maternal grandmother. I happily inherited classic volumes from her and my mother. I acquired more at a bookstore in Wisconsin that was housed in a renovated silo. I could lose myself for hours in a library or bookstore. I acquire books WAY faster than I can read them, as the piles on my bedside table can attest.
On my recent trip to France I savored time in bookstores on four different occasions.
On the first I stocked up on a few new children's books for my daughter. Luckily she loves them and has added the words "monstre," "aie," "loup" and "peur" to her vocabulary thanks to them. Although I was focused mostly on the stories themselves when picking them out, I was slightly disappointed by the homogeneity of the illustrations. Most were flat renderings with a limited color palette. It made me appreciate the creativity of classics like The Very Hungry Caterpillar which retains brush strokes and allows one color to shine through the one laid on top.
On the second, in Aix-en-Provence, I wanted to find some books on migritude. Having read about this literary movement in sources like The New York Times and having already read a few books by Fatou Diome, one of its principal participants, I wanted to find more. When I discovered a huge bookstore in the center of Aix, a city known for its diverse student population and a region that attracts immigrants and visitors from much of the francophone world, I thought it would be a good starting point. Unfortunately, the clerk working that day had never heard of "migritude" or any associated authors. She located three of Diome's books but couldn't be of more help than that.
This experience has made me wonder about the state of francophone literature within France and outside it. My French parents, sister and her siblings have studied few, if any, francophone works and in some cases have never heard about authors from the francophone canon. Are the drivers of francophone studies largely located outside of France? One possible indicator can be found in the advisory boards of academic journals. Most of the biggest Names work in the U.S. or U.K. Hmmm...
Third, the classification system used at a bookstore on rue Mouffetard in Paris was enlightening. In glancing at the shelves I noticed a section of "Anglophone" literature, one devoted to "La Caraïbe et Afrique" and a third with literature from the Maghreb and Mashreq (although I can't remember the exact title of this section). To my surprise the Caribbean/African section contained books by Maya Angelou and Dave Eggers. Nina Bouraoui and Leïla Sebbar, however, were integrated in the stacks of "French" authors. When I asked the woman working she thought about it for a moment then explained it had more to do with the authors' subject matter and sensibilities than their origins. This fascinates me. In my mind, no contemporary author better embodies American experiences than Angelou. I don't recall a strong "Caribbean" or "African" current in her works. Eggers' body of work explores a range of subjects and genres. For example, Zeitoun is a nonfiction book that looks at a Syrian-American impacted by Hurricane Katrina. What is the What is a novel following a Sudanese refugee. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is a memoir about his life. Other topics include world travel, Saudi Arabia and working in corporate America. His "Caribbean" or "African" sensibilities elude me. Yet I use the word "enlightening" because the organization of this one bookstore perfectly illustrates something many of us take for granted: the whole world is organized according to individual choices. Those choices are based on an infinite number of reasons. They are all subjective at some level. There is no single way in which to categorize a group of something which means there is also no "right" way to group it either.
I suspect the bookstore's owners who trying to transcend geo-political boundaries when they decided to group books by topic or "sensibility." How do you neatly categorize a group of authors like Bouraoui, or Sebbar, who have parents of different origins? Or Marguerite Duras and Albert Camus whose parents were of the same origin (French) but who grew up far from metropolitan France in what were French colonies (Indochina and Algeria, respectively)? Better yet, how do you justify grouping all four together as this bookstore did? How many different categories would you have to create in order to give each group its own unique identity? And yet, if everything in the whole store were simply shelved according to author's last name, how much unnecessary scanning would customers have to do?
Fourth, the bookstore located at the Institut du monde arabe. For a francophoniste it was heaven.
There was no need to ask where the "francophone" authors were located. Virtually everything was francophone. There was no disappointment to see only the most canonical works that I already own to be found. There were numerous new works by my favorite authors. I could have spent a fortune and hours there. In the end I bought only one book by Maïssa Bey, a short play she recently wrote, Tu vois c'que j'veux dire?, because I think it will be short, pithy, and accessible to my upper level students.
These four experiences illustrate the trajectory my own reading has taken. I began college with a cursory (at best) understanding of francophone literature and no interest in children's literature. Now I specialize in francophone literature, interrogate the ways it is classified, and seek ways to make it accessible for my students. Oh, to have a leveled library for them, where they would have a wealth of options at the right level the foster their language competence. Now I am a bit of a children's book snob. Clearly taste, like language choice, is reflective of experience.
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