Rethinking Marriage in Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures

Offering a detailed and well organized literary analysis of marriage practices in African and Caribbean literatures, Cecile Accilien provides us with a timely and highly informative work on an understudied topic. She successfully demonstrates that African and Caribbean societies are indeed a complex interaction and intersection of a multitude of factors shaping the dynamic of conjugal relations. This study will be of immense value to scholars and students of African and Caribbean literatures and cultures. -- Shirin Edwin, Sam Houston State University * Research in African Literatures *
In Rethinking Marriage, Cecile Accilien makes an important intervention by addressing a significant trope in Francophone African and Caribbean literature and film that is seldom addressed in a complex, comparative framework. She successfully illustrates the powerful role played by patriarchal institutions that regulate and manipulate the marital union. It is also commendable that she informs her arguments with critical voices from Africa and the Caribbean. Accilien must be commended for a valuable study into the world of gender politics, womanhood, and motherhood. Her intervention provokes further interrogation into the complicated contract of the marital union. Accilien has clearly demonstrated that this terrain needs both exposure and exploration.. -- Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw * H-Caribbean *
Cécile Accilien’s Rethinking the Marriage Concept in Francophone African and Caribbean Literatures, is an important work that sheds new light on the marriage convention in diasporic postcolonial francophone literature as well as the discourses on feminist (womanist) scholarship. Her well researched analysis of gender, sexuality, religion, class, métissage, ethnicity and culture in novels and films illustrates the complex ways women define and redefine themselves in traditional and modern contexts, and refashion the socio-cultural matrix that affects marriage and, ultimately, nation building. This book is an impressive study, a refreshing and welcome addition to the scholarship on African diasporic women. -- Régine Latortue, professor of Africana Studies, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York
In Rethinking Marriage, Cecile Accilien makes an important intervention by addressing a significant trope in Francophone African and Caribbean literature and film that is seldom addressed in a complex, comparative framework. She successfully illustrates the powerful role played by patriarchal institutions that regulate and manipulate the marital union. It is also commendable that she informs her arguments with critical voices from Africa and the Caribbean. Accilien must be commended for a valuable study into the world of gender politics, womanhood, and motherhood. Her intervention provokes further interrogation into the complicated contract of the marital union. Accilien has clearly demonstrated that this terrain needs both exposure and exploration. -- Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw * H-Caribbean *
I recommend this book for all researchers and students who are interested in marriages, women studies, African/Caribbean cultures, and feminist movement. * INTAMS review: Journal for the Study of Marriage & Spirituality *