Philologia Hispalensis (Dec 2020)
Afropean Identities in Blues Pour Elise by Leonora Miano
Abstract
Blues pour Elise features characters from young middle-class Afropean (which means both African and European) women. The question of race is there, but in the background: it is the love stories of the characters that occupy the narrative. We will see that this way of putting the question of race in the background allows Léonora Miano to avoid the miserable stereotypes to which the black characters in French novels are too often reduced. On the contrary, in this novel, she builds a great diversity of Afropean identity models through her characters. The novel also offers an Afropean "mental territory" thanks to the musical references present at the end of each chapter.
