Congratulations to Professor Felisa Vergara Reynolds whose book "The Author as Cannibal: Rewriting in Francophone Literature as a Postcolonial Genre, 1969–1995" has just been released in its paper and electronic editions by Nebraska University Press.
The book situates Francophone authors engaged in an exercise of rewriting narratives from the colonial literary canon within Francophone studies, showing that the extent of their postcolonial critique is better understood when they are considered collectively. Crucial to the book are two interviews with Maryse Condé, French novelist, critic, and playwright from Guadeloupe, that provide great insight on literary cannibalism. By foregrounding thematic concerns and writing strategies in these texts, Professor Reynolds shows how these rewritings are an underappreciated collective form of protest and resistance for Francophone authors.
Rokhaya Diallo, French journalist, writer, filmmaker, and activist for racial, gender, and religious equality, praises the book as "brilliantly display[ing] the common movement originated by authors who subvert the colonial lens by using its codes and transform them into the tools of its critique," and Professor H. Adlai Murdoch calls the book an "impressive postcolonial reading of the author [that] locates literary rewriting as a political form of protest, resistance, and reappropriation."
Bravo, Professor Reynolds!