Cultural and Ethnic Studies: Black People Literature (Essay Sample)

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Cultural and Ethnic Studies: Black People Literature
Question: Discuss the significance of epistolarity in the narration of Black Francophone postcolonial subjectivity. Why do so many African and Caribbean French-speaking authors choose to write their novels as collections of letters or diary entries?
Many African and Caribbean French-speaking authors prefer writing their novels as a composition of letters or diaries as it allows them to address diverse audiences and express their message in a direct manner. The piecemeal nature of their work is – to a certain extent – a reflection of their identity crisis, as their ancestral origins are at odds with their education and culture.
Diaries produce a dissimilar narrative to an assemblage of letters in that diaries tend to be more realistic and sincere than letters. On the other hand, letters offer a more comprehensive and intimate record of a narration than a diary. Furthermore, a letter is normally addressed to a particular recipient, which is not the case in diaries since they are composed as an exercise of self-examination. Letter collections, as a rule, offer less insight into the thoughts of the narrator than diaries which usually have a confessional character.
There is a connection between the Black Francophone Epistolary Novel and other literary traditions, such as Autobiography, the Koran, the New Testament, slave narratives, the foundling text (taking up the “unfinished project,” Cervantes), the Picaresque (Lazarillo de Tormes), the European canonical epistolary tradition (Richardson, Austen), and African oral-literary (griot) traditions of the Epic (Epic of Sunjata). The connection lies in the fact that they all contain diverse narrations which in many of them appear in the form of a letter. For instance, “He thinks this humiliates me and he can’t find any other way. He forgets that it is all part of my job as a houseboy, a job which holds no more secrets for me. I wonder why he too refers to me as ‘Monsieur Toundi’ ...” (Oyono 72)
Epistolarity is an illustration of the mise-en-abоme phenomenon because it relies on bits and pieces that involve self-reflection instead of presenting a comprehensive literary work. Epistolarity is also an an effort to create dialogic “reflection”. Hegel, Sartre, Lacan, Fanon, and other self/other “Identification” theorists have attempted to produce that kind of reflection by focusing on their personal experience. However, such reflection often remains elusive as a result of the fact that self-reflection is subject to various types of bias. Epistolarity includes characteristics like imitation because the narratives are delivered in a way that makes them resemble each other. A reason for further assimilation arises from the fact that the pieces are adapted from the original African language (Adesanmi 240).
In the epistolary novels, the first-person voice is vital because it contains the experience of that particular author in the form of an individual narrating the things that he or she went through, like oppression, colonization, and the myth of neutrality. For instance, “------ my poor father. He keeps complaining that at nearly fifteen I’m only in the first year of middle school, whilst ------.” (Beti 9). First-person narration fosters the delivery of internal or private life operations as authors reflect on their personal experience. Additionally, the writer’s voice softens a sometimes degraded aspect of life experience.
Epistolary texts can be read as writerly texts since they contain personal reflections and are not optimized for publishing. Furthermore, they contain stories about past events and aim at enabling the reader understand the black people’s historical experience (Courville 5). These letters can also be understood as a cry for help; the authors have had to contend with historical forces that led to the compartmentalization of their experience. Perhaps the pain of this process motivates authors to address their audiences for the relief to be gained from sharing one’s troubles.
Epistolarity, on the other hand, reconstitutes an uneven self into a comprehensible whole because of how it contains the true stories of the individuals during and after the colonial period. The narrators only talk about the problems that they went through in person during that time. For example, “You are born anywhere, any how. You die anywhere, from anything. It's a world with no space, people are piled one on top of the other,” (Burke 134). Epistolarity endorses an undoubted claim for truth, authenticity, and realism because the marginalized authors demonstrate their understanding of psychoanalysis, exile, and trauma. Besides, it shapes the restrictions amongst fact and narrative because of the intimate feeling that is maintained by the authors concerning the past.
It is apparent that epistolary writers have experienced trauma, which has influenced their awareness of the Western world and their own psychological difficulties. For instance, “And misfortune always, inevitably, follows the transgression of a custom, if ...