13th Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research

Presentation Abstracts

TURNER, Felicity

Tale-Tellers of the Future: narrative and historical consciousness in the work of Patrick Chamoiseau and Edwidge Danticat

Literary critic, Trinh Minh-ha, has observed that ‘storytelling’ is “…the oldest form of building historical consciousness in community…” But, in a modern world focused on globalisation and the primacy of the written word, the survival of this form is increasingly jeopardised.

This paper will focus on the works of two authors, Patrick Chamoiseau, a Martinican author who won the prestigious Prix de Goncourt for his novel Texaco in 1992, and Edwidge Danticat, an emerging Haitian American writer, who has also been the recipient of one of Europe’s pre-eminent literary awards, the Premi Flaiano.

Chamoiseau is an outspoken advocate of the concept of ‘Creolite’ (creole-ness), a merging of written and oral forms of narrative that pays homage to the spoken story-telling tradition of Martinique. Similarly, Danticat defines herself as a ‘weaver of tales’ with a responsibility to continue telling the stories of her country’s past, as Haitian people become increasingly dispersed throughout the world.

This paper will examine the ways in which Chamoiseau and Danticat use traditional stories and oral narrative within their written work to contest the dominant modes of telling history and historicizing the past. In so doing, they create a synthesis between oral and written narratives, and forge a past that each nation can carry with them into the future.

References
Trinh T. Minh-ha, Women, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), p.148.
Edwidge Danticat, She Came a Long Way: Spotlight on Edwidge Danticat, interview by Anna Battista at http://www.haitianconection.com/danticat.html accessed on 31 October 2000.