| Title |
Orality/aurality and voice of the voiceless mother in Abla Farhoud’s "Happiness has a slippery tail" / |
| Authors |
Kačkutė-Hagan, Eglė |
| DOI |
10.1007/978-3-031-17211-3_5 |
| ISBN |
9783031172137 |
| eISBN |
9783031172137 |
| Full Text |
|
| Is Part of |
Narratives of motherhood and mothering in fiction and life writing / Helena Wahlström Henriksson, Anna Williams, Margaretha Fahlgren (eds).. Cham : Springer International Publishing, 2023. p. 77-92.. ISBN 9783031172137. eISBN 9783031172137 |
| Abstract [eng] |
The problem of the representation of the mother’s voice and the maternal perspective in literary fiction has been a concern of contemporary scholarship in women’s writing for several decades. This chapter explores the literary representation of the voice and the perspective of a seemingly voiceless migrant mother who is silent in the language of the host country through the novel Happiness Has a Slippery Tail (1998) ( Le bonheur a la queue glissante ) by the Canadian Quebecois author of Lebanese origin, Abla Farhoud. This chapter demonstrates that in terms of literary representation of the mother’s voice, matrifocal migrant women’s writing relies on the orality of the mother’s voice to articulate the experience of mothering across the language barrier. It argues that the novel tells the story of a marginalised migrant mother in two voices: the aural voice of a marginalised mother who is voiceless in French and in writing (she is illiterate) and that of a French-educated writer daughter who understands the quality of the mother’s voice in Arabic. In this way the voice of the silent mother can be heard by the Western readership, and her perspective inscribed in the Western literary tradition. |
| Published |
Cham : Springer International Publishing, 2023 |
| Type |
Book part |
| Language |
English |
| Publication date |
2023 |
| CC license |
|
