Aller-retour-détour: Transdiasporic Nomadism and the Navigation of Literary Prescription in the Work of Kim Thúy and Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut. Issue 1 (April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kurmann, Alexandra
• Is Part Of: Australian journal of French studies. Volume 55:Issue 1(2018)
• Page Start: 65
• Page End: 78
• Publication Date: 2018-04
• Subjects: French literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Frans; Filologie; Littérature française -- Histoire et critique -- Périodiques; French literature; Criticism, interpretation, etc; Periodicals; 840.9
• DOI: 10.3828/AJFS.2018.07
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0004-9468

Abstract

Abstract : In Ru and Le Palais du Mandarin Kim Thúy and Thanh-Van Tran-Nhut respectively depict multiple homecomings and lateral mobility across the diaspora, signalling a transition in Vietnamese-Francophone Studies from an engagement with exile-writing to the production of a transdiasporic literature. Such a turn involves writing for the transnational Việt Kiều community as much as for readers across nations of settlement. Correspondingly, Thúy recounts her family's flight and her aller-retours to Vietnam, while expressing gratitude towards her North American readership, while Tran-Nhut's culinary travel stories whet the appetite of a Franco-French public at the same time as satiating the nostalgic desires of Vietnamese-Francophone readers. Yet both writers simultaneously resist such prescription of their work in Glissantian narrative detours that circumvent readerly claims on the text. A new transdiasporic nomadism offered here, which encompasses literary navigations across, within, and beyond the borders of the Vietnamese diaspora, facilitates literary resistance by providing a shared elsewhere whence to write.