When Faïza Guène published her début novel Kiffe kiffe demain at the age of nineteen in 2004, she quickly became the public face of an entire generation of young women of North African heritage living in France's banlieues. Leading national newspapers, magazines, and television programmes heavily covered the book's release, and the novel sold briskly. Journalists focused on its spirited first-person narrator, Doria, who recounts the difficulties but also the joys of life as an adolescent living in a housing complex on the periphery of Paris. But few added that Doria's Moroccan heritage and her residence in the Livry-Gargan banlieue are only two characteristics among many contributing to Doria's unique voice. Her ethnic heritage and place of residence immediately took centre stage in discussions of the book. In a reference to Françoise Sagan—who also published her first novel Bonjour Tristesse at a young age (eighteen, in 1954)—the weekly news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur introduced Guène to its readers as ‘la Sagan des cités’ (‘the Sagan of the hoods ’), a phrase that soon appeared on a special front cover flap for the book.

Despite its marketing appeal, the phrase itself—la Sagan des cités—is a complicated reference with links to both a literary precedent and a socio-geographic identification. Like Sagan's narrator Cécile, Doria is smart, witty, and remarkably self-aware. But the geographic marker cité also pushes readers to look for a representation of France's tough, economically marginalized outer urban regions, which are perceived by journalists, politicians, and other French people as housing a large population of immigrants. As indicated by Le Nouvel Observateur's slogan, Kiffe kiffe demain is noteworthy for its youthful, realistic portrayal of a specific urban region and of its teenaged population (with an implied ethnic background, since the French banlieues are heavily populated by immigrants). Guène, however, consistently fought against the ‘Sagan des cités’ label, saying that she had not known Sagan's writing until Le Nouvel Observateur coined the phrase and never sought to write a ‘true’ or ‘real’ portrayal of her community. She did not see the setting of the novel nor the ethnic backgrounds of her characters as central to the story but rather as two aspects among the many defining them.