d15rdA`b~ i h d a ~ .

DRAFT: A WORK IN PROGRESS:
d15rdA'b~
ih d a ~ .
No portion of this pape , or the ideas presented therein, may be quoted,
paraphrased or reproduced in any way without the express written consent
of the author.
3
Copyright 200 1 by Belinda Deneen Wallace
The theme of migration has been well addressed in the literature of many
Caribbean writers. What interests me, however, is how Caribbean writers
address the issue of migration and exile when the initial migration is
from one part of the Diaspora and the ultimate destination is another part
of that Diaspora, as opposed to Europe or North America. In my reading of
Myriam Warner-Vieyra's Juletane, I will explore geographic displacement
and the search for a "mother-land" through an examination of such notions
as "home," "origins," and nation; which, inevitably, leads to a discussion
on alienation, exile, identity and madness, as these are key elements in
understanding the effects, and affects, of this particular migratory
experience. This approach is especially beneficial because there seems to
be something deeper, even tangible, attached to a physical location that
appears to travel with Juletane, our protagonist for whom the novel is
named, and contributes to her increasing sense of alienation and shifting
identity.
The migratory experience often functions as a solution to a particular
problem. Frequently it is viewed as the answer to a longing where the
journey's final destination represents a type of "promised-land" (andlor
"mother-land") which will "save" the character from some form of
political or economic hardship. However, in many Caribbean women's
writings, the migratory experience, while it may offer political or
economic sanctuary, commonly acts as a response to some personal lose. It
functions as a bridge to erase a rupture which has occurred and reconciles
the character with her self, her history, her origins, and her home. Such
a reconciliation can only, presumably, take place in the
"promised-land," which is metaphorically or physically Europe, complete
with the illusions of wealth and well being, or the "mother-land," which
is metaphorically or physically Africa with the illusions of roots and
identity. Of course, there are times when the "mother-land" becomes
conflated with the "promised-land" or vice-versa.
Bella Brodzki argues, the Caribbean has an important relationship to the
"triangle de traite" which is a variation on the traditional definition of
the African Diaspora which consist of Africa, the Caribbean and the
Americas, and instead defines the "triangle" as Africa, the West and the
Metropolis, which has had significant impact on Caribbean writings:
The three points of the 'triangle de traitel--Africa, the West,
and the Metropole--fixed points of reference as
sites of longing, though privileged differently in the
minds and psyches of Caribbean subjects, have left their
imprint on all Francophone Caribbean writing, but especially on writing
by women. (64)
I, however, explore these sites not only as a longing in that they
represent a desire for or, rather, a craving to possess, but also as a
place of infestation and false reconciliation. Warner-Vieyra's
protagonist, Juletane, leaves Guadeloupe to transverse the "triangle" in
hopes of reconciling herself via her perceived "mother-landn--which
manifest itself as an unspecified country in Africa. Juxtaposing the
traditional triangle of the Diaspora against Brodzki's "triangle," allows
us to examine the Caribbean as both a site of departure and rejection as
well we destination and acceptance. This is directly related to
Juletane's inability to culturally or geographically adjust and her,
albeit in some cases belated, acknowledgment of her environment as a
source of her alienation and, in turn, her eventual illness.
Continuing with the journey itself, Juletane sets out to correct
her own rupture. However, her journey-of-initiation soon becomes a
'3ourney-of-alienation." Juletane is engaged in a reverse Middle Passage,
hoping to undo the separation that was done hundreds of years prior. This
journey is a reflection of Juletane's own desires to (re)connect with
Africa, to engage in Brodzki's "triangle." For Juletane, Africa functions
as the mythical signifier which designates a return home, a unification
with one's origins and a rebirth of the self.
The search for selflidentity, a history or a mother is not
unproblematic--something Juletane discovers almost immediately; for the
journey back to Africa is not just a physical journey, but also a
psychological one. It is on this journey that Juletane becomes
disillusioned with the notion of Africa as her place of origin when she
finds out, aboard ship, that Mamadou, her new husband, already has a
family. Before she even reaches the shores of the "mother-land," Juletane
is established as an outsider, an illegitimate daughter. She experiences
what Elaine Campbell calls a "psychic jolt:" [Juletane's] psychic jolt
occurs when she learns aboard ship to Africa that Mamadou already has a
wife and child. She, Juletane, is to become his second wife. She defines
her own role as the "intruder" in what is to become an alien country with
unacceptable social customs" (1 36). Juletane feels as if she is "on
another planet;" thus further highlighting her alien-ness in every sense
of the word.
Juletane's ineffective attepmts to become a primary part of
Mamdou's life interrupt her undertakings to view Africa as a metaphorical
or real mother, as this needs to be mediated through Mamadou. This aim is
a direct result of Juletane's orphaned status:
I thought I had found in Mamadou the family I missed, so I
did not love him only as a lover a husband. I
transferred to him all the filial affection which was
overflowing in me as well. Once again, I felt the anguish of
being an orphan. Lost, alone, in the world. I was totally confused
. . . the future I had dreamed about was being
slowly transformed into a painful present . . . . I
was there, absurdly alone to face them. I was the stranger
. . . (Warner-Vieyra 15)
Juletane is orphaned at the age of ten and forced to leave her
birth home of Guadeloupe for France. In France we see a constant longing
for a "mother" which she projects onto Africa and those things-including
people-African. Consequently, Mamadou becomes her surrogate ( and the
gender-inversion should not be lost on one here). Thus Juletane's
physical journey along the triangle reflects a common theme of
dislocation: sometimes to the continent of Africa, at other times back to
the Caribbean, but always with a stop in the Metropolis. The results of
this pilgrimage are mirrored in the multiple ruptures Juletane suffers.
The first of which is the initial rupture created by the Middle
Passage and the process of commodifying African bodies. While this
rupture is important, of equal importance, is the second rupture: the
break between Juletane and her native country of Guadeloupe. This rupture
coincides with the death of her father, thus leaving her completely
orphaned--without homeland, without parents. Brodzki argues that
Juletane's orphaned status means that "she is not only psychologically and
physically bereft but also that . . . she lacks a history, her access to
the 'Other' in the figure of the African Mamadou constitutes both an
opening up to a wider social, cultural world and a return to the
motherland." (67) However, Juletane's homecoming is not entirely a
positive one. Therefore we see a third rupture take place where Juletane
opts out of her new community, thereby solidifying her status as not only
alien, but also mad.
The isolation in which Juletane finds herself can be attributed to her
inability to adapt to a new environment. Anne Elizabeth Willie argues
that Juletane's efforts to find herself, her family, and her past in
Mamadou and Africa are shown to be illusions that cannot withstand the
constant intrusion of a reality that marks Juletane's difference as a
Caribbean person in the African context." (453) Willie further comments
that this displacement is the leading cause of Juletane's madness and
eventual death. While it is certainly true that Juletane's arrival in
Africa contributes to her psychological deterioration, her "decent" into
madness starts long before her physical journey. It is, in fact, located
in her rootlessness, the ruptures that she suffers early in her life makes
madness her only viable survival technique--a point which I will return to
momentarily.
Although Warner-Vieyra's text spends less than one-fourth of its
time in the Metropolis of Paris, this location is critical to our
analysis. The metropolis serves as the site of contamination and it is
only through this geographical location can we fully understand Juletane's
later designation as mad, as well as her subsequent experiences in
Africa. In other words, in order to understand Juletane in Africa, we
must begin in France, not Guadeloupe. Thus our "triangle" is complicated
by these, if I may borrow from Francoise Lionnet, "georgraphies of
pain." Lionette describes "georgaphies of pain" as the "production of a
specifically female literary vision . . . ,"where female writes address
the issue of pain, visibility and identity. She further posits, Caribbean
women authors write "with meticulous attention to realistic detail, and
the paradoxical desire to communicate, in the most honest way possible,
the radically subjective, and thus generally incommunicable, experience of
pain. [Where] the characters are being denied the most elementary form of
recognition and visibility . . . ." (137)
Thus we can read Juletane's migration as a quest for self which
ultimately fails to give her the recognition, visibility or identity she
so desperately crave. Unbeknownst to Juletane, these "geographies of
pain," signal a new beginning through the rejection of the myth of Africa
and the Metropolis as the mother and/or promised land for post-colonial
female bodies; it also makes it clear that Africa cannot function as the
mythical signifier. The problem for Juletane is that she exchanges one
location, France, for the fantasy of another, the unspecified African
country, in an attempt to compensate for her lost. Before she encounters
the physical Africa, Juletane has constructed her own fantasy of Africa as
a metaphysical space which will serve as her personal sanctuary. When the
fantasy of Africa does not concur with the reality, she is unable to
ground herself, and becomes, even more so than her experience in Paris,
experiences which she describes as being damp, dark and heavy, alienated
and exiled.
Willey, borrowing (or, perhaps, taking liberties with her
reading) Eduard Glissant, describes the Caribbean islands as "ships of
fools," set a drift and disconnected. If we accept this reading, then
Juletane's disconnectedness can be attributed to her inability to
acknowledge her Caribbean self and recall that heritage; as she states,
after her grandmother's death, "I was completely cut off from my island
home. . ." This failure to acknowledge an origin separate from Africa is
often experienced by people in the African Diaspora. Willey argues the
'Afro-Caribbean population is stuck between the lost land of Africa and
the unreachable land of Europe" (45 1). Thus they are in a constant state
of suspension, belonging neither to the country they are from (in this
case Guadeloupe), nor to the country they arrive at (the unspecified
African nation).
Willey and others assert that this form of permanent exile often
leads to madness. I posit, however, that it is not exile that leads to
Juletane's madness, but her ineffectual ability to root herself
historically or geographically. Viewing the Caribbean as "ships of
fools" limits our analysis to reading the Caribbean only in the context of
being Africa's or Europe's illegitimate child. Of course in Diaspora
studies, it is necessary to establish the ties between African and the
Caribbean, however, acknowledging such a connection in no way eliminates
the possibility of examining the Caribbean as an autonomous
entity. Nevertheless, if we read Juletane as one these islands, we can
see her misguided attempt to adapt Africa as her mother subsequently leads
to an futile endeavor to see herself as an autonomous being. If Mamadou
serves as a surrogate mother, and he does, as well as a stand-in for
Africa, then Juletane's identity must be defined against and through
him. Juletanes states: "Awa is the mother of his children, Ndeye his
partner in debauchery. How does he feel about me?" (41) This desire
blinds her to the possibility of viewing Guadeloupe as home, a place of
origin in its own right; it also blinds her to her own sense of self
worth, entitlement and independence.
Adele King believes black women's desire to connect with Africa as
a mythical mother is an exercise in vain:
The black man from the Diaspora who goes to Africa is
perhaps seeking a return not only to roots but to
maternal warmth, looking for a mother to replace
the Guadeloupe . . .which seems unsatisfactory. But as . . . a
woman, in order to mature, must settle accounts with her own mother--a
mother who in these novels is absent or unsatisfactory; a mother, if
equated with the mother island, who is too passive, too ill defined. For a
woman that mother cannot be, metaphorically, Africa. (102)
As you can see, such a search for an identity, a history or a nation is
not unproblematic. In fact, Maryse Conde cautions people from the
Diaspora against viewing Africa as the mythical signifier of a lost, and
therefore recoverable, past without acknowledging the geographical and
cultural distance. Conde states: "While Africa has often been envisaged
by Caribbeans as the 'mother' country [it is] difficult, even impossible
to retie the broken threads. . . . A Caribben's quest for identity can
very well be resolved without going, especially physically, to Africa, or,
if you want, the journey to Africa simply proves that Africa is not
essential to Caribbean identity." (98) Therefore, Juletane's aspirations
for an essential African identity, or even a universal ideal of
black-ness, becomes impossible to fulfill.
Warner-Vieyra complicates the mythic quest for "mother Africa" by
illustrating the possibilities of what could happen if one is not grounded
(geographical as well as psychologically) in her particular cultural and
social space. "Juletane tries to insert herself into an Africa
context," argues Willey, "but her stated ignorance of her own colonized
context makes her efforts to read Africa unfruitful. Her claim to know
nothing of the colonized context erases her Caribbean heritage. She
cannot recognize the origin of her separation from Africa, the Middle
Passage." (455) This is reflected in one of Juletane's few references to
Guadeloupe:
I forget about myself, I am lulled into sleep, I dream about streams and
waterfalls. I am back in my island, a child again, on the banks of a clear
running stream. I wade in, my weariness dissolves in the
cool water. My heart swells with happiness. This is the
first time since I have been here that I ahve thought about my
homeland. Usually the memories that come
back to me are of my life in France. (29)
While this is certainly true of Juletane's early experience in Africa,
she later comes to recognize this separation. She laments: "I have no
home / I am an exile, an alien / I am a wreck, drifting in the wind / I
lost all my illusions." (60) Not until Juletane acknowledges the gap that
exists between herself--the self of Guadeloupe--and Africa, can she begin
her journey toward wholeness. Further recognition comes when Ndeye, her
co-wife, refers to her as a "toubabesse." Juletane is shocked to be
called a white woman while on African soil. She states:
She was quite simply identifying me with those white wives
of colonials. She was even stripping me of my identity as a black
woman. My forefathers had paid dearly for my
right to be black, spilling blood and giving their sweat
in hopeless revolts to enrich the soil of the Americas so
that I might be born free and proud to be black. (Juletane 42-43)
While Juletane rejects the label of toubabesse, conversely, she
gladly laid claim to her western "bourgeois-up bring." (7) This initial
stance greatly limits her ability to interact with the African community,
including Mamadou, in a non-western context. Nevertheless, when Juletane
is forced to define herself, she consciously and decisively lay claim to
her Caribbean heritage. Her remarks illustrate a distinct connection toa
hybrid existence in the Caribbean, not Africa. This change in position
and knowledge can only come about through her stated experiences in
Africa. Such an epiphany, however, is short lived as she remains
completely alienated by her physical environment where she is confined to
a small, dark room (much like her existence in Paris) separated from the
rest of the family. Again, she finds herself in a perpetual state of
exile, negotiating the African world only through her bedroom window.
Betty Wilson describes Juletane's situation as being like a
"little fish who [has] lost its way--a 'nageoiresl--who has lost the
establishing element which enables it to stay upright and a float in the
vast ocean of life . . . (Vii) The community reads Juletane's withdrawal
as a clear sign of (western) insanity, rather that a response to her
drowning in the vast ocean of their society. Despite all of this,
Juletane knows very well she is quite sane:
Here, they call me 'the mad woman', not very
original. What do they know about madness? What if mad
people weren't mad? What if certain types of behavior
which simple, ordinary people call madness, were just
wisdom, a reflection of the clear-sighted hypersensitivity of a pure,
upright soul plunged into a real or imaginary affective
void . To me, I am the most lucid person in the
house. (Juletane 2)
For Juletane, although engaging in some behaviors which could certainly be
classified as clinical or cultural forms of madness, the madness is not
located within her, but within the geography-the "affective void" of the
Metropolis, and in turn the "affective void" of Africa
itself. Consequently, Juletane's quest reflects her existence in the
nether world--a world that can neither be erased nor substituted by Africa
or Europe. Thus the "triangle de triate" comes not to represent a haven
or an answer to the longing our protagonist experience, it is not
salvation; instead, it represents a site of exploration.
Bibliography
Ba, Mariama. Une si longue lettre. Dakar: Les Nouvelles Editions
Africaines, 1980.
---. So Long a Letter. Trans. Modupe Bode-Thomas. London: Heinemann,
1981.
Badejo, Diedre L. "The Goddess Osun as a Paradigm For the African
Feminist Criticism." Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black
Women. 6.1 (Summer 1989): 27- 32.
Brodzki, Bella. "ReadingIWriting Women in Myriam Warner-Vieyra's
Juletane. Studies in Twentieth Century Literature. 17.1 (Winter
1993): 63-77.
Campbell, Elaine. "The Theme of Madness in Four African and Caribbean
Novels by Women." Commonwealth Novel in English. 6.1-2 (Spring-Fall
1993): 133-41.
Cham, Mbye Baboucar. The Female Condition in Africa: A Literary
Exploration By Mariama Ba. A Contemporary Bibliography in African
Literature. 17.1 (1984185): 19-51.
Champagne, John. " 'A Feminist Just Like Us' Teaching Mariama Ba's So
Long A Letter." College English 58.1 (January 1996): 22-42.
Clemenete, Linda. "Reevaluating Sanity in Myriam Warner-Vieyra's Le
Quimboiseur dit . . . Juletane." French Literature Series 22
(1 995): 79-9 1.
De Vita, Alexis Brooks. "Wresting Order From Chaos: Reading Mythological
Influences in Warner-Vieyra's Juletane." Griot: Official Journal of
the Southern Conference on Afro. American Studies Inc. 16.1 (Spring
1997): 48-57.
Ekotto, Frieda. "Language and Confinement in Francophone Women
Writers." L'Esprit Createur 3 8.3 (Fall 1998): 73-83.
Feng, Pin-chia. The Female Bildungsroman by Toni Morrison and Maxine Hong
Kingston: A Postmodern Reading. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
King, Adele. "Two Caribbean Women Go to Africa: Maryse Conde's
Heremakhonon and Myriam Warner-Vieyra's Juletane. College Literature
18.3 (October 1991): 96-105.
Lionnett, Francoise. "Geographies of Pain: Captive Bodies and Violent
Acts in the Fiction of Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Gayle Jones and Bessie
Head." Callaloo: A Journal of African American Arts and Letters 16.1
(Winter 1993): 132-52.
Mikell, Gwendolyn. African Feminism: the Politics of Survival in
Sub-Saharan Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1997.
Mudimbe-Boyi, Elisabeth. "Narrative 'je(ux)' in Kamourasja by Anne Hebert
and Juletane by Myriam Warner-Vieyra." Postcolonial
Subjects: Francophone Women Writers. Ed. Mary Jean Green, Karen Gould,
Micheline Rice-Maximin, Keith L. Walker and Joyce
A. Yeager.. Univesity of Minnesota Press, 1996:124- 139.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres. Third World Women
and the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1991.
Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Plume, 1973.
Mortimer, Mildred. "An Interview with Myriam Warner-Vieyra." Callaloo: A
Journal of African American Arts and Letter 16.1 (1993): 108-115.
Ngate, Jonathan. "Reading Warner-Vieyra's Juletane." Callaloo: A Journal
of African American Arts and Letter 9.4 (Fall 1986): 553-564.
O'Callaghan, Evelyn. "Interior Schism Dramatised: The Treatment of the
'Mad' Woman in the Work of Some Caribbean Novelists." Out of the
Kumbla: Caribbean Women and Litreature. Ed. Carole Boyce Davies and
Elaine Savory Fido. Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 1990, 89-1 10.
Okhamafe, E. Imafedia. "African Feminism(s) and the Question of the
Marital and Non-Marital Loneliness and Intimacy in Mariama Ba's So
Long a Letter." Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women. 6.1
(Summer 1989): 33-39.
Plakkoottam, Alphy J. "The Dynamics of Man-Woman Relationships in
T. Morrison's Song of Solomon and Mariama Ba's So Long a
Letter." Indian Journal of American Studies 23.2 (Summer
1993): 85-90.
Pryse, Marjorie and Hortense J. Spillers. Conjuring: Black Women,
Fiction, and Literary Tradition. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.
Reyes, Angelita. "The Epistolary Voices of Indigenous Feminism in
Mariama Ba's Une si longue lettre." Moving Beyond Boundaries,
Volume Two: Black Women's Diasporas. Ed. Carole Boyce Davies. New
York: New York UP, 199,195-217.
Rueschmann, Eva. "Female Self-Definition and the African Community in
Mariama Ba's Epistolary Novel So Long a Letter." International
Women's Writing: New Landscapes of Identity. Ed. Anne E. Brown and
Marjanne E. Gooze London:
Greenwood Press, 1995,3-18.
Rogers, Juliette M. "Reading, Writing, and Recovering a Women's Creole
Identity in Myriam Warner-Vieyra's Juletane." The French Review 69
(March 1996): 595-604.
Shevlin, Eleanor F. "Cartographic Refrains and Postcolonial
Terrains: Mariama Ba's Scarlet Song." Modern Fiction Studies 43.4
(Winter 1997):933-62.
Susan Stringer. "Cultural Conflict in the Novels of Two African Writers,
Maiama Ba and Aminata Sow Fall." Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black
Women. (Student Supplement 1988): 36-4 1.
---. Three Senegalese Novel by Women: Through Their Own
Eyes. (Francophone
Cultures and Literatures; vol. 7). New
York: Peter Lang, 1996.
Treiber, Jeanette. "Feminism and Identity Politics: Mariama Ba's Un Chant
Ecarlate." Research in African Literatures 27.4 (Winter 1996): 109-23.
Walker, Keith L. "Postscripts: Mariama Ba, Epistolarity, Menopause, and
Postcoloniality." Postcolonial Subjects: Francophone Women
Writers. Ed. Mary Jean Green, Karen Gould,
Micheline
Rice-Maximin,
.
- - -.
177V, Lrv-LV-t.
- -
Warner-Vieyra, Myriam. Juletane. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1982.
Juletane. Trans. Betty Wilson. London: Heinemann, 1987.
Willey, Ann Elizabeth. "Madness and the Middle Passage Warner-Vierya's
Juletane as a Paradigm for Writing Caribbean and Women's
Identities. Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 2 1.2 (Summer
1997): 449-467.
Willis, Susan. Specifying: Black Women Writing the American
Experience. Madsion: the University of Wisconsin Press, 1987
Wilson, Elizabeth. "Le voyage et l'espace closl--Island and Journey as
Metaphor: Aspects of Women's Experience in the Works of Francophoe
Caribbean Women Novelist. Out of the Kumbla: Caribbean Women and
Litreature. Ed. Carole Boyce Davies and Elaine Savory Fido. Trenton,
NJ: African World Press, 1990, 45-58.