<i>The Migrant Canon in Twenty-First-Century France</i>. Oana Sabo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Pp. ix+198.

Previous article FreeBook ReviewThe Migrant Canon in Twenty-First-Century France. Oana Sabo. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018. Pp. ix+198.Julianna Blair WatsonJulianna Blair WatsonEmory University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe Migrant Canon is a sophisticated, innovative, and timely examination of the genre of migrant fiction in France, tracing its development from a marginal position in the 1980s to an influential one in twenty-first-century criticism and publishing. The Migrant Canon, whose cover design—especially its red band—recalls both the French publishing house Gallimard and the removable red slip added to prizewinning books in France, focuses on the areas of production, reception, and consecration of “migrant literature” in order to explore its canonization. Examining both new and old legitimating agents and strategies, The Migrant Canon seeks to demarginalize the category of migrant fiction in contemporary French literary production. Oana Sabo, an associate professor at Tulane University, expertly analyzes the editorial, institutional, and reading mechanisms that bestow an ever-increasing value to the fictional French-language migrant novel. The author engages in close readings and sociohistorical analysis in order to challenge existing dichotomies such as francophone/French, elite/popular, aesthetic/commercial, center/periphery, and consecrated/emergent. The result of such rich analyses is a dynamic new literary categorization that no longer separates French and migrant literature from one another.Early in its introduction The Migrant Canon offers an original approach to the French literary tradition, one that defies and redefines the concept as the author bases “French” not on birth or residence in France, but merely through publishing with French presses. While this significant change is but one of many instances whereby this work undoes and opens borders surrounding literary consecration and categorization, it is more difficult to pinpoint the author’s definition of “migrant literature” until the conclusion: “fictional texts that narrate the experience of migration” (161). Although not stated as such until the end, this definition nevertheless questions traditional understandings of the genre throughout this work. The Migrant Canon interweaves writers who are native-born French (Delphine Coulin, Mathias Énard, Laurent Gaudé, Michaël Ferrier, Marie Redonnet, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Alice Zeniter) with those who are immigrants to France or African diasporic writers (Gauz, Milan Kundera, Henri Lopes, Andreï Makine), noting authors who write in French but live abroad (Énard, Ferrier, Dany Laferrière). The author’s broad knowledge of and references to writers of migrant fiction is quite remarkable. The choice of writers, though, for the in-depth analyses does have a somewhat disproportionate focus on Europeans and immigrants from European countries (Coulin, Énard, Gaudé, Ferrier, Kundera, Makine, Redonnet, Schmitt, Zeniter); the only non-Europeans being Gauz, Laferrière, and Lopes, this choice could initially seem like a problematic whitewashing or appropriation of the periphery by the center. However, The Migrant Canon skillfully and subtly reveals that the genre of migrant fiction in France breaks down barriers like those between the center and the periphery, intermingling the two to suggest that such concepts no longer suffice to describe contemporary French literary production.In chapter 1, the author examines the production forces and the agency of authors and editors in attributing value to migrant fiction. This chapter discusses both presses that see migrant fiction as natural to French literature—that is, those that do not assign migrant literature a special category—and presses that seek to capitalize on the exotic nature sometimes associated with this genre through the creation of series highlighting Francophonie or immigration. Similarly, this chapter contrasts a writer like Henri Lopes, who works against rigid labels but is nevertheless categorized in association with his francophone, Congolese roots, with Ivorian writer Gauz, who “does not shy away from the markers of exoticism and their appeal to French readers” (54). The author showcases the variety of literary production mechanisms that either accentuate authorial identity—sometimes against the author’s wishes like in Lopes’s case—or that stress genre conventions as migrant fiction has become centralized.Chapter 2 focuses on reception, in particular the growing influence of online readers and critics in the literary consecration of migrant fiction. The author looks at the recent emergence of digital book forums such as Babelio, SensCritique, and even Amazon to argue for a “radical change” in the legitimating forces of the migrant genre. In particular, this chapter centers on reviews of Milan Kundera’s L’ignorance and Andreï Makine’s La vie d’un homme inconnu. In looking at the reviews, the author considers multiple factors such as a reviewer’s use of comparisons to similar novels or other works from the same writer, references to genre conventions, and attribution of literary value. This chapter underlines a significant shift from elite and professional critics as the principal driving force assigning value to certain literary works, a shift that equally highlights the futility of the divide between aesthetic and commercial value.Chapter 3, “Consecration,” looks at the 2010 creation of a literary prize, the Prix Littéraire de la Porte Dorée, awarded annually to a fictional text written in French about immigration or exile. The author analyzes three winners of the prize, Alice Zeniter, Michaël Ferrier, and Mathias Énard, and how their fictional works challenge French hegemony and assimilationism to argue for a more open sense of belonging. This chapter further underscores the tensions at play in contemporary French literary production. This new prize both celebrates immigration as an integral, historical element to French culture and “invites a reconsideration of contemporary French literature through the lens of immigration” (101). Yet this prize simultaneously reinforces a national configuration of French literature and, as it is sponsored by a state institution housed in a space that formerly glorified French colonialism, embodies another marker of hegemony.In its last chapter on canonization, The Migrant Canon details the sinuous trajectory of Haitian-born, Montréal-based writer Dany Laferrière, culminating in his 2013 election to the prestigious Académie française. The author underlines that Laferrière joined the Académie neither as a Haitian nor Quebecois writer but as he wanted, a transnational writer who refuses to be labeled in any one geographical or literary category. This chapter keenly situates Laferrière’s career as the embodiment of one of The Migrant Canon’s main arguments: “Yet Laferrière does not attempt to smooth the contradiction between his transnational positioning and the national character of the académie” (129). Laferrière’s contradictory self-positioning stresses the myriad, often opposing, forces at play that legitimate, consecrate, and canonize migrant fiction in contemporary French literary production.The Migrant Canon makes clear the heterogenous nature of the contemporary French literary market and the central role migrant fiction plays in challenging French nationalistic hegemony and the historical binary of French/francophone. In the emphasis the author places on describing oppositions such as professional versus lay reader, elite/popular, or aesthetic/commercial, the author occasionally appears to reify these binaries. Ultimately, though, the author refutes these and other classifications, thereby establishing migrant fiction as “constitutive of contemporary French literature” (5). Opting for radical definitions of both French and migrant literature, The Migrant Canon is a must-read for scholars of migration, French andfrancophone literature, of postcolonial studies, and of global (literary) studies. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 117, Number 1August 2019 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/704187HistoryPublished online May 10, 2019 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

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