Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- I Authorship at a Crossroads: The Changing Faces of French Writing, 1983–2013
- II Mehdi Charef and the Invention of Beur Writing
- III Competing Visions of Minority Authorship: Azouz Begag and Farida Belghoul
- IV Eyewitness Narratives and the Creation of the Beurette
- V Rachid Djaïdani and the Shift from Beur to Banlieue Writing
- VI Revising the Beurette Label: Faïza Guène's Ongoing Quest to Reframe the Reception of Her Work
- VII Sabri Louatah and the Qui fait la France? Collective: Literature and Politics since 2007
- Works Cited
- Index
III - Competing Visions of Minority Authorship: Azouz Begag and Farida Belghoul
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- I Authorship at a Crossroads: The Changing Faces of French Writing, 1983–2013
- II Mehdi Charef and the Invention of Beur Writing
- III Competing Visions of Minority Authorship: Azouz Begag and Farida Belghoul
- IV Eyewitness Narratives and the Creation of the Beurette
- V Rachid Djaïdani and the Shift from Beur to Banlieue Writing
- VI Revising the Beurette Label: Faïza Guène's Ongoing Quest to Reframe the Reception of Her Work
- VII Sabri Louatah and the Qui fait la France? Collective: Literature and Politics since 2007
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
‘Je savais que ces histoires étaient intéressantes, c'est pour ça que je les ai exploitées.’
– Azouz Begag, Azouz Begag:le gone de nulle part, France 3, February 20, 1991‘Les beurs c'est, pour moi, une marionnette manipulée par Madame la France.’
– Farida Belghoul, Voix du Silence, France Culture, April 11, 1987.When Mehdi Charef published his début novel Le thé au harem d'Archi Ahmed, he quickly became a public voice for the North African immigrant population living in France in the early 1980s. As demonstrated in Chapter II, Charef used his media appearances to tell viewers about the difficulties of life in France's economically marginalized banlieues, particularly for youth of North African descent. But Charef and his novel also did much more: Le thé au harem inspired an entire generation of young writers to take up the pen and share their own stories as children of North African immigrants to France. Azouz Begag, who has become one of the most prominent and politically active authors from this population, attributes his decision to write to the strong emotions he felt when he discovered Charef's work:
It was the first time in my life that reading a book created such a strong personal reaction. It literally de-centered me, transforming the vision I had up to that point of the possible world in which the child of immigrants could conceive of his place in France. […] Every page I turned brought forth impressions, ideas, and emotions that were very familiar. How had the author known how to find with such precision the phrases that would give life to things that I thought were so very privately my own? […] Today, I can declare that it was Tea in the Harem that sparked my own writing, my own need to formulate the story of my life, my history. Someone else had done it, so I could too.
Begag's explanation of the impact Le thé au harem had on him reveals both how Charef's text had touched him and how he conceptualizes his own writing: Begag set out to write his personal story, to depict familiar ‘impressions, ideas, and emotions.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Branding the 'Beur' AuthorMinority Writing and the Media in France, pp. 80 - 120Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2015