Véronique Tadjo and Léonora Miano in conversation: memory and textual instability in a search for community

Abstract

In Véronique Tadjo’s Loin de mon père and Léonora Miano’s La saison de l’ombre the authors struggle in different ways with the question of how to create a memory of something people do not want to face or even speak about. They even move beyond this question towards focusing on how to reconcile with a past that has been hushed and erased, with real consequences in the present. Movement also plays into memory in the novels through the characters’ forced and voluntary movement. I use movement here in a broad sense that includes literal movement between different spaces and movement as something symbolic such as jumps in time, movement in the text and narrative itself, and between languages, for example. This article will argue that Glissant’s notions of créolisation, opacité, and relation help to frame the comparison and shed light on the processes the characters are under in both novels. It also furthers the connection between memory and movement when the characters in both novels. Finally, this paper will also reflect on the writing in both texts and how the texts’ instability is maintained in its movement in translation.