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An interdisciplinary collection of essays examining the depiction of immigration from North Africa in contemporary French culture.

<p>Introduction – Véronique Machelidon and Patrick Saveau<br>1 ‘Qui fait la France?’ New configurations of Frenchness in contemporary urban fiction – Steve Puig<br>2 Breaking the chains of ethnic identity: Faïza Guène, Saphia Azzeddine, and Nadia Bouzid, or the birth of a new Maghrebi-French women’s literature – Patrick Saveau<br>3 From daughter to mother, from sister to brother: building identities in Faïza Guène’s novels – Florina Matu<br>4 The immigrant in Abdellatif Kechiche’s cinematic work: transcending the question of origins – Emna Mrabet<br>5 Seeking paths to existence in Rachid Djaïdani’s <i>Rengaine </i>– Mona El Khoury<br>6 <i>Beur</i> and <i>banlieue</i> television comedies: new perspectives on immigration – Caroline Fache <br>7 They had a dream: out-marching exclusion and hatred – Jimia Boutouba<br>8 Narrativizing foreclosed history in ‘postmemorial’ fiction of the Algerian War in France: October 17, 1961, a case in point – Michel Laronde<br>9 Unearthing the father’s secret: postmemory and identity in <i>harki </i>and pied-noir narratives – Véronique Machelidon<br>10 Representations of the <i>harkis</i> in contemporary French-language films – Susan Ireland<br>11 ‘L’oued revient toujours dans son lit’: Franco-Maghrebi identity in Hassan Legzouli’s film <i>Ten’ja </i>– Ramona Mielusel<br>12 Rewriting the memory of immigration: Samuel Zaoui’s <i>Saint Denis </i><i>bout du monde</i> – Mireille Le Breton<br>13 <i>Harragas</i> in Mediterranean <i>illiterature</i> and cinema – Hakim Abderrezak<br>Index</p>

<p>Véronique Machelidon is Associate Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina<br><br>Patrick Saveau is Professor of French and Cultural Studies at Franklin University Switzerland</p>

<p>Taking the pulse of French post-coloniality, this volume invites the reader to explore the many different faces of Frenchness at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The essays explore the challenges and hopes facing the multicultural country of today, in relation to the legacies of its colonial past. <br><br> The contributors invoke the transformative powers of literature, film, and television, pleading for an honest and open recognition of the centrality of post-<i>beur</i> authors and directors on France’s cultural scene, and of their vital role in overcoming monocultural norms. The variety of approaches – sociological, historical, political, literary, and cultural – celebrates recent films, television programs, and novels produced by citizens of so-called ‘immigrant’ and North African heritage, who use French as their language of choice. <br><br> Located at the intersection of migration studies and diaspora studies, as well as film and literature studies, the various chapters throw fresh light on challenging works that deflate stereotypes regarding France’s post-immigration population. They foreground themes such as urban culture and globalization, cultural <i>metissage</i>, racial diversity, transnationalism, mobility, and connectedness across generational, social, and racial divides, as well as the healing of historical trauma, the decloistering of memories through post-memory, and ‘illiterature’. <br><br> The contributors draw on a wide range of seminal literary and film authors, from Tahar Ben Jelloun, Faïza Guène, Dalila Kerchouche, Mohamed Teriah, Samuel Zaoui, to Merzak Allouache, Yamina Benguigui, Rachid Djaidani, and Abdellatif Kechiche, while also revealing important new voices.</p>