“Le pays, c’était comme la femme d’un autre”: Reconceptualising West African Migrant Masculinity in Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique and Léonora Miano’s Tels des astres éteints

Abstract

Fatou Diome and Léonora Miano, both born in Africa and living in France, are part of the growing number of diasporic West African writers seeking to transform the landscape of African literature. In this article, I will examine the emerging notions of masculinity in relation to West African migrants in Paris to gauge the extent to which the women writers are reconceptualising masculine identity, and thus debunking erstwhile notions of masculinity. This article analyses how Miano and Diome reshape and reconstruct African masculinities in post-colonial, contemporary France, where nationalism and the need to assert French identity is becoming more prominent. The concept of nostalgia and its implied hope for a return are examined to determine whether the return is ever completely possible and how this shifts the conceptualization of masculinity. Moreover, the tension between the new home and the original home and their role in identity construction is analysed to demonstrate whether the emergent Black masculinities depicted display a new way of reshaping masculinity.

Keywords

• migrant African literature
• gender
• masculinities
• identity construction
• immigrant identity
• Diome (Fatou)