AN ALGERIAN CHILDHOOD
, AN ALGERIAN CHILDHOOD Edited by After 132 years of resistance, Algeria finally succeeded in gaining independence from the French in 1962, only to face equally bloody internal strife during the ensuing years. An impressive group of Francophone writers has been gathered in this unique and inspired collection of autobiographical narratives emphasizing childhood in that turbulent place. By such authors as Hélène Cixous, the French feminist writer and theorist, and canonical Algerian writers like Malek Alloula, the stories all reside in the same context of loss, violence and division, each moving like strands of a web outward toward a new and distinct selfhood, which is to say, a new nationhood. Cixous describes her beloved Algeria as a captive "body composed of Arab, Spaniard, Jew, Catholic, military and French [which] was not free. No matter how I loved it. It was a political body, swollen, limbs inflamed, a monster people, mouths gasping tongues laden with gobs of saliva ready to be spit in each others faces, puffy knees, throats thick with afterthoughts, strangers to themselves, foreign, furious. Joy stayed up on the mountain." Jean Daniel recounts that in his "French Algeria, the life of the senses was Mediterranean and the life of the mind, to me, was Parisian." And childhood itself is investigated as Cixous, for instance, decides that "children painfully force themselves to imitate 'the child' they never are, and, as they cannot manage this, they pretend and devote themselves to hiding their deception." Captivity and childhood consciousness are conflated in the powerful prose of this wonderful meditation on postcolonial Algeria. (Apr.)
closeDetailsReviewed on: 04/02/2001
Genre: Nonfiction
After 132 years of resistance, Algeria finally succeeded in gaining independence from the French in 1962, only to face equally bloody internal strife during the ensuing years. An impressive group of Francophone writers has been gathered in this unique and inspired collection of autobiographical narratives emphasizing childhood in that turbulent place. By such authors as Hélène Cixous, the French feminist writer and theorist, and canonical Algerian writers like Malek Alloula, the stories all reside in the same context of loss, violence and division, each moving like strands of a web outward toward a new and distinct selfhood, which is to say, a new nationhood. Cixous describes her beloved Algeria as a captive "body composed of Arab, Spaniard, Jew, Catholic, military and French [which] was not free. No matter how I loved it. It was a political body, swollen, limbs inflamed, a monster people, mouths gasping tongues laden with gobs of saliva ready to be spit in each others faces, puffy knees, throats thick with afterthoughts, strangers to themselves, foreign, furious. Joy stayed up on the mountain." Jean Daniel recounts that in his "French Algeria, the life of the senses was Mediterranean and the life of the mind, to me, was Parisian." And childhood itself is investigated as Cixous, for instance, decides that "children painfully force themselves to imitate 'the child' they never are, and, as they cannot manage this, they pretend and devote themselves to hiding their deception." Captivity and childhood consciousness are conflated in the powerful prose of this wonderful meditation on postcolonial Algeria.
Reviewed on: 04/02/2001
Genre: Nonfiction
