Hardwick offers new insight into the collective character of francophone recits d'enfance by Caribbean authors, demonstrating persuasively that the ongoing narrative impact of slavery cannot be elided.
French Studies, Vol. 68, no 2
This well-researched and cogently written study makes a convincing argument for the significance of the recit d'enfance in discussions about Francophone Caribbean literature. Sarah ... Read moreBarbour, New West Indian Guide Hardwick's discussion of intertextuality-both among writers and self-referential-and her contextualization of the childhood memoirs within their authors' larger oeuvre are most illuminating...Hardwick's book constitutes a significant contribution to Francophone Caribbean literary criticism. Odile Ferly, L'Espirit Createur Louise Hardwick's excellent study is a most welcome contribution to the field ... With its beautiful style and pedagogical structure, it is a didactic masterpiece. Christina Kullberg, Karib: Nordic Journal for Caribbean Studies
Karib: Nordic Journal for Caribbean Studies
In an impressive series of close readings, Louise Hardwick analyses the genre of autobiographical childhood narratives ... These innovative readings constitute the volume's tour de force: in inaugurating the critical field of recits d'enfance studies, it renews our approaches to Francophone Caribbean literature in general. Malik Noel-Ferdinand, The Arts Journal: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Literature, History, Art and Culture of Guyana and the Caribbean ... a study that is a pleasure to read ... Hardwick's meticulous research, balanced approach and lucid prose merit serious consideration from specialists of the region. Francoise Lionnet, Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Journal of Postcolonial Writing
Childhood, Autobiography and the Francophone Caribbean is the first book-length study of a remarkable literary phenomenon that emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century in the French Antilles and Haiti - the autobiographical narrative. Louise Hardwick expertly analyses this relatively understudied genre which uses childhood narrative in as much a politically as an aesthetically subversive manner. Her clear, meticulous and informed study reveals the ways in which these narratives of childhood, driven by a devoir de memoire, relate individual memory to collective identity. This is a welcome critical work that makes a major contribution to francophone as well as to postcolonial literary studies. J. Michael Dash Show Less