Childhood is a time of beginnings and discoveries, and accordingly récits d'enfance play a foundational and initiatory role in Francophone Caribbean literature. Close focus on a series of texts has revealed the dynamics at play in each narrative, and identified how every author's distinct style emerges, as well as uncovering thematic connections which illustrate the significance of the récits d'enfance for an individual author's wider oeuvre. These authors were writing at different times, under different conditions, and originate from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti and French Guiana. They also represent the experience of diaspora and Antillean immigration to France and North America. Analysis of the récits d'enfance offers a means of comparing and contrasting a wide range of themes which come to prominence in discussions of childhood by these diverse authors. The récit d'enfance is also a self–conscious and self–reflexive genre, with which authors seek to establish the parameters of Antillean literature. The narratives demand to be read interactively, aiming to stimulate the reader's curiosity in the episodes they recount. In doing so, they gesture to a rich Antillean literary heritage as well as confronting the legacy of colonialism, and in every text considered, literary analysis has gone hand in hand with rigorous historical contextualization.

Due to the semi–autobiographical nature of the texts, biographical details have been incorporated into each chapter. Attention has been paid to the interplay of fact and fiction within the récits d'enfance, but this is not an attempt to ‘expose’ falsehoods; rather, it develops a more sophisticated understanding of the récit d'enfance as a genre. This study cautions against critical approaches which describe the texts as ‘autobiographies’ and which read them as faithful mimetic presentations of childhood. For as it has emerged, in the récits d'enfance childhood operates in a ludic mode. Like the period of childhood itself, the texts are rich in invention, artifice and imagination.

Récits d'enfance occupy a particular place in any author's oeuvre. They are marketable and relatively accessible in terms of literary style, particularly when compared with many novels by the same authors. Chris Bongie has recently drawn attention to the fact that the popularity of certain Francophone authors is often ignored by academic critics.