Rachid Djaïdani and the Shift from Beur to Banlieue Writing

In response to the discourses presented above, this chapter considers one male voice, Rachid Djaïdani, responding to the accusations of criminality and violence. Through his three novels (Boumkœur (1999), Mon nerf (2004), Viscéral (2008)) and two films (Sur ma ligne (2006), Rengaine (2012)), Djaïdani challenges standard stereotypes regarding the violence of young men in France’s ghettos. He portrays young men suffering from on-going unemployment and frustration but generally attempting to forge futures for themselves. Several characters seek salvation through art, either as writers or as actors. In his interviews Djaïdani first accepted all questions asked of him and readily discussed social and political matters. As his career has progressed, however, he has become increasingly vocal in his defence of his artistic engagement, telling interviewers that his work is not only socio-political but artistically nuanced as well. He struggles to articulate his support of universalism in literature as he also relies on many standard images of criminality and violence, but he pushes his viewers to reconsider how ethnic minority authors are treated in French literature.

Sabri Louatah and the Qui fait la France? Collective

The concluding chapter to the book compares two recent literary phenomena: a manifesto by a group of artists who sought for greater recognition of their artistic projects as well as the Les Sauvages trilogy by Sabri Louatah. The manifesto strongly proclaims the group’s frustrations with literary labelling and also condemns French society for on-going marginalization and discrimination. Their literary and political projects become confused, however, in that they often seem to contradict themselves by arguing for greater openness in readings of their work but then published a collection of short stories specifically about racism and discrimination in contemporary French society. Louatah’s trilogy, on the other hand, employs Arab characters but in a clearly fictionalized setting. His interviewers ask him much more about his writing process and artistic goals, and when they move toward social or political matters he politely tells them he has nothing to say. The presence of these two currents, the chapter argues, demonstrates that the descendants of North African immigrants to France have reached a point where many perspectives are possible and publicized by the mainstream media, which is perhaps the clearest sign of accomplishing their goals of being treated as insiders to French society.

Competing Visions of Minority Authorship

This chapter examines two opposing viewpoints regarding minority authorship in France in the mid-1980s in the context of the aftermath of the Marche des Beurs period. In his interviews for his quasi-autobiographical novels Le gone du Chaâba (1986) and Béni ou le paradis privé (1988) Azouz Begag strongly promoted his special expertise as a representative of the beur population. He readily volunteered to educated his interviewers and viewers about life in France’s North African immigrant communities and rarely discussed his books in detail. Farida Belghoul, on the other hand, argued forcefully for an exclusively artistic reading of her novel Georgette! (1986). She attacked journalists who imposed an ethnic frame on her work and criticized other authors of North African descent of writing too simplistically. In the end Belghoul’s commentary did not attract television journalists and she only appeared on a few highly specialized radio shows. Begag’s arguments therefore reached a much wider audience and played a stronger role in contributing to how novels by authors from the beur population were read in the mid- to late-1980s.

Eyewitness Narrativesand the Creation of the Beurette

Through the context of the rise of fears of Islamism after several high-profile terrorist attacks in France, this chapter considers the impact of discourses of violence against women in the North African community. After a brief history of the ‘veil affairs’ in France (1989-2003), the chapter focuses on two authors who received significant attention in the audio-visual media: Soraya Nini for her 1993 novel Ils disent que je suis une beurette and Samira Bellil for her 2002 memoir Dans l’enfer des tournantes. These texts, although different in literary genre and scope and published nearly a decade apart, were discussed in parallel terms: as voices of emancipated young women who support French institutions and call for more involvement and protection from state authorities against supposedly violent and barbaric young men. Through these conversations a new iteration of ‘beur literature’ was born, that of the ‘beurette’ (young woman) struggling to declare her independence and freedom from oppressive familial customs.

Revising the Beurette Label

Focusing on Faïza Guène’s promotion of her four novels (Kiffe kiffe demain (2004), Du rêve pour les oufs (2006), Les gens du Balto (2008), and Un homme ça ne pleure pas (2014)), this chapter explores Guène’s theorization of literary universalism and how French journalists fall short of reading her novels in ways she believes they should. With her first novel she directly attacked interviewers who asked her social and political questions, telling them that she has nothing to say about the veil, for example, and that she finds their focus on such matters frustrating. For her second novel she became more abstract in her answers, explaining to journalists why such questioning made her uncomfortable. She then used her third novel to move away from ‘beur’ thematics but still struggled with reviewers who judged her based on her previous focus on immigrant characters. Her fourth novel moves even further from the frames repeatedly employed in readings of her work by focusing on a male protagonist and his family. Guène has, with this work, received a more socially neutral reception and has used the space accorded to her to discuss her attention to artistry and the creation of a unique voice.

Mehdi Charef and theInvention of Beur Writing

After a brief discussion of political activism in the early 1980s by the descendants of North African immigrants to France, this chapter explores the reception and promotion of Mehdi Charef’s début novel, Le thé au harem d’Archi Ahmed (1983). Charef appeared on several top literary, society, and news programs, and successfully established himself as an insider providing new perspectives on France’s North African immigrant community. To better understand the contours of Charef’s media appearances, the chapter also explores the lack of attention accorded to Nacer Kettane’s Le sourire de Brahim and Leïla Sebbar’s Shérazade, 17 ans, brune, frisée, les yeux verts. Kettane promoted his work dogmatically as a political intervention, while Sebbar focused artistic and feminist aspects of her writing. These case studies reveal how Charef successfully positioned himself in a middle ground, as an author who accepted social and political readings of his work but also provided new and unique information on a population that had come to be heavily discussed by journalists and politicians.

Authorship at a Crossroads

Presenting a broad overview of the historical and literary context in which the descendants of North African immigrants to France began to write novels, this introductory chapter establishes the primary questions and stakes of the book. It provides readers with necessary contextual information such as the French presence in Algeria as well as government policies regarding audio-visual broadcasting. It also presents several related scholarly studies in the field and argues that this book presents new perspectives on a well-studied population by considering the role of the audio-visual media in creating a commonly shared idea of what types of novels these authors write. Theories by Stuart Hall (dominant, negotiated, and contestatory frameworks), Édouard Glissant (opacity), and Pierre Bourdieu (literary field) are used to place these authors in a broader context. The chapter concludes by arguing that scholarly studies of this literature, like other texts labelled as ‘Francophone’ or ‘Postcolonial,’ has been pre-determined by which texts have been promoted in the media and thus supported by publishers.