大象传媒

Listen to Roxanne Panchasi's latest podcast, in which she interviews Kathryn Kleppinger about her book . Read Dr. Panchasi's summary below, and check out the podcast on the .

• Kathryn Kleppinger鈥檚  (Liverpool University Press, 2015) examines the 鈥減aradox of ethnic minority writing鈥� in the work of multiple authors of North African descent over a thirty-year period. Organized chronologically as a series of portraits, the book鈥檚 chapters deal with the literary (and filmic) output of an impressive number of writers, including Mehdi Charef, Azouz Begag, Farida Belghoul, Soraya Nini, Samira Bellil, Rachid Djaidani,Faiza Guene, and Sabri Loutah. Considering literary works themselves, as well as the audio-visual media representation of texts and authors on French TV and radio, Kleppinger鈥檚 analysis pushes back against the tendency to understand 鈥渂eur鈥� literature in exclusively social and political terms at the expense of aesthetic or artistic readings.
  
  Drawing on a range of sources, from literature to television and radio archives, to interviews  conducted with the authors themselves, the book weaves together the analysis of form and content, spoken word and gesture, personal and professional biography, representational and political strategies and effects. Exploring the categories that have simultaneously gained these authors and texts attention and limited the ways they have been understood, Branding the Beur Author moves across three decades of tremendous change in contemporary France. Its pages explore the work of both men and women writing, reading, and interrogating the 鈥渂eur鈥漚s a social and literary identity in a nation engaged both historically and currently in crucial debates regarding the meanings of difference.