Crossing genre boundaries: H. J. Golakai's Afropolitan chick-lit mysteries

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Rebecca Fasselt
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Romantic Relationship ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Women Detectives ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Chick Lit ◽  
Romance Plot ◽  
Lazarus Effect

Crime fiction by women writers across the globe has in recent years begun to explore the position of women detectives within post-feminist cultural contexts, moving away from the explicit refusal of the heterosexual romance plot in earlier feminist ‘hard-boiled’ fiction. In this article, I analyse Hawa Jande Golakai's The Lazarus Effect (2011) and The Score (2015) as part of the tradition of crime fiction by women writers in South Africa. Joining local crime writers such as Angela Makholwa, Golakai not only questions orthodox conceptions of gender and sexuality in traditional iterations of the crime novel, but also combines elements of chick-lit with the crime plot. Reading the archetypal quest structure of the two genres against the background of Sara Ahmed's cultural critique of happiness, I argue that Golakai inventively recasts the recent sub-genre of the chick-lit mystery from the perspective of an Afropolitan detective. Her detective tenaciously undercuts the future-directed happiness script that structures conventional chick-lit and detective novels with their respective focus on finding a fulfilling heterosexual, monogamous romantic relationship, and the resolution of the crime and restoration of order. In this way, the novels defy the frequently assumed apolitical nature of chick-lit texts and also allow us to reimagine the idea of Afropolitanism, outside of its dominant consumerist form, as a critical Afropolitanism that emerges from an openness to be affected by the unhappiness and suffering of others.

scholarly journals Crime and Violence in the Fiction of Caterina Albert / Víctor Català Connections with the Crime Novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lluïsa Julià Capdevila
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Crime Novel

After classifying the fictional genres that are to be found in the seven volumes of short stories by Caterina Albert / Víctor Català that were published between 1902 and 1951, this article studies the ways in which the corrosive sense and presence of violence and crime are used against the patriarchal system in her work. The new line of research presented here, comparing Víctor Català’s short stories with crime fiction, is still in its early stages. The analysis of some specific stories also considers the technical evolution and introduction of cinematographic forms. Finally, it is noted how Víctor Català is a precursor of women writers of today’s increasingly popular crime fiction.

scholarly journals “Chick Noir”: Shopaholic Meets Double Indemnity

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Women's Writing ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Cross Pollination ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Chick Lit ◽  
Narrative Forms ◽  
Double Indemnity ◽  
Women’S Writing ◽  
Popular Books

Abstract In early 2014, several articles appeared proclaiming the rise to prominence of a new subgenre of the crime novel: “chick noir,” which included popular books like Gone Girl, The Silent Wife, and Before We Met. However, there was also resistance to the new genre label from critics who viewed it as belittling to women’s writing and to female-focused narratives. Indeed, the separation of female-centred books - whether “chick lit” or “chick noir” - from mainstream fiction remains highly problematic and reflects the persistence of a gendered literary hierarchy. However, as this paper suggests, the label “chick noir” also reflects the fact that in these novels the crime thriller has been revitalized through cross-pollination with the so-called chick lit novel. I contend that chick lit and chick noir are two narrative forms addressing many of the same concerns relating to the modern woman, offering two different responses: humour and horror. Comparing the features of chick noir to those of chick lit and noir crime fiction, I suggest that chick noir may be read as a manifestation of feminist anger and anxiety - responses to the contemporary pressure to be “wonder women.”

scholarly journals Bloody Women: How Female Authors Have Transformed the Scottish Contemporary Crime Fiction Genre

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-71
Author(s):  
Lorna Hill
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Practice Based Research ◽  
Changing Attitudes

Abstract This study will explore the role of female authors in contemporary Scottish crime fiction. Over the past thirty years, women writers have overhauled the traditionally male dominated genre of crime fiction by writing about strong female characters who drive the plot and solve the crimes. Authors including Val McDermid, Denise Mina and Lin Anderson are just a few of the women who have challenged the expectation of gender and genre. By setting their novels in contemporary society they reflect a range of social and political issues through the lens of a female protagonist. By closely examining the female characters, both journalists, in Val McDermid’s Lindsay Gordon series and Denise Mina’s Paddy Meehan series, I wish to explore the issue of gender through these writers’ perspectives. This essay documents the influence of these writers on my own practice-based research which involves writing a crime novel set in a post referendum Scotland. I examine a progressive and contemporary Scottish society, where women hold many senior positions in public life, and investigate whether this has an effect on the outcome of crimes. Through this narrative, my main character will focus on the current and largely hidden crimes of human trafficking and domestic abuse. By doing this I examine the ways in which the modern crime novel has evolved to cross genre boundaries. In addition to focusing on a crime, the victims and witnesses, today’s crime novels are tackling social issues to reflect society’s changing attitudes and values.

Unreliable Narration in Law and Fiction

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-338
Author(s):  
Daniel Del Gobbo
Keyword(s):  
Crime Fiction ◽  
High Court ◽  
Law System ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Objective Interpretation ◽  
Essential Quality ◽  
Fiction Writers ◽  
The Common ◽  
Agatha Christie ◽  
Unreliable Narration

This article revisits long-standing debates about objective interpretation in the common law system by focusing on a crime novel by Agatha Christie and judicial opinion by the Ontario High Court. Conventions of the crime fiction and judicial opinion genres inform readers’ assumption that the two texts are objectively interpretable. This article challenges this assumption by demonstrating that unreliable narration is often, if not always, a feature of written communication. Judges, like crime fiction writers, are storytellers. While these authors might intend for their stories to be read in certain ways, the potential for interpretive disconnect between unreliable narrators and readers means there can be no essential quality that marks a literary or legal text’s meaning as objective. Taken to heart, this demands that judges try to narrate their decisions more reliably so that readers are able to interpret the texts correctly when it matters most.

Per una metodologia del protogiallo italiano: Problemi e proposte

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 511-531
Author(s):  
Francesca Facchi
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Classification Problem ◽  
Crime Fiction ◽  
Detective Novel ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Famous Trials ◽  
Methodological Difficulties

In the first systematic study about the Italian detective novel (1979), Loris Rambelli dates the beginnings of the genre to 1929, the publication year of the first of publisher Mondadori's ‘Yellow Books’ (Libri Gialli), the series of yellow-covered books which made the ‘giallo’ synonymous with a crime novel. Nonetheless, texts dealing with mysteries, criminals, police, trials and detection enthralled Italian readers from the 1850s on, complying with the modern dynamics of mass phenomena, contributing to the modern conception of the genre, and playing a crucial role in the culture and society of a recently unified Italy. Not conforming to a recognizable genre-structure, the pre-1929 period has been defined the “prehistory of Italian crime fiction” or protogiallo and has become a topic of academic interest only in recent years. The newness of the scholarship explains the methodological difficulties researchers have to face, such as the classification problem – it is very complex to establish common critical criteria for analyzing diverse materials such as feuilletons, novels, short stories and famous trials journals – and the objective delay in the development of the genre in Italy, especially compared to the British, American and French cases. Building on the recent line of investigation, this paper examines such critical issues in order to identify a methodological approach and a theoretical framework useful to study the prehistory of Italian crime fiction.

scholarly journals Sobre la existencia de una novela policíaca española : un breve repaso a sus principales títulos, autores e hitos

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 51-62
Author(s):  
Diego Ernesto Parra Sánchez
Keyword(s):  
Crime Fiction ◽  
The Political ◽  
Detective Novel ◽  
Crime Novel ◽  
The One

This article intends to reflect on the convenience or inconvenience of talking about Spanish detective novel as a solid and influential crime novel trend as the British, the French or the U. S. crime fiction trends. With this aim, apart from having a look to the main arguments either in favor or against this consideration, this work delves into the most important titles and the most representative authors, on the one hand, and into the political, social and economical events which have surrounded the Spanish crime fiction from its origin.

scholarly journals Sexuality and Healing in the African Diaspora: A Transnational Approach to Toni Morrison and Gyasi

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 183
Author(s):  
Mar Gallego
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
African American ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Enslaved Women ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Identity And Agency ◽  
Black Bodies

This article examines the literary production of two writers from the African diaspora, specifically African American Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008), and Ghanaian-American Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016), to explore their significance as counter-narratives that defy the “official” historiography of enslavement times in order to set the records straight, as it were. By highlighting these women writers’ project of resistance against normative definitions of black bodies, it is my contention that these works effectively mobilize notions of race, gender, and sexuality. Revisiting the harmful and denigrating legacy of stereotypical designation of enslaved women, these writers make significant political and literary interventions to facilitate the recovery, wholeness, and sanctity of the violated and abjected black body. In their attempt to counter ongoing processes of commodification, exploitation, fetishization, and sexualization, I argue that these writers chronicle new forms of identity and agency that promote individual and generational healing and care as forms of protest and resistance against toxic definitions of hegemonic gender and sexuality.

Ireland and Sapphic Journalism between the Wars: A Case Study of Urania (1916–40)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Steele
Keyword(s):  
Gender Norms ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Gender Essentialism ◽  
Compulsory Heterosexuality ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cross Dressing

This chapter examines the Irish dimension of the bi-monthly (later tri-annual) periodical Urania (1916-1940) through a focus on the influence of Eva Gore-Booth (1870-1926). Gore-Booth’s editorial vision and writing for Urania conveyed a radical message about gender and sexuality: ‘sex is an accident.’ On its pages, Urania assiduously collected a hidden history of lesbians, transsexuals, and intersexuality and advanced a transnational, cross-cultural critique of gender norms, gendered performances, and compulsory heterosexuality. Urania initially sought to broaden its appeal by supporting votes for women, but remained more intent on serving as a ‘queer archive’ dedicated to dismantling gender norms and documenting women’s past and present examples of transsexuality, intersexuality, cross-dressing, and lesbianism. In its remediation of the global press, Urania also constructed a composite, feminist portrait of a society free of gender essentialism and heterosexual normativity. The journal was affiliated with the Aëthnic Union, a small, radical organisation founded in 1911.

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