Arabic As a Secret Song / Leïla Sebbar ; translated by Skyler Artes ; afterword by Mildred Mortimer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sebbar, Leïla, author.

Contributor:

Artes, Skyler, translator.

Mortimer, Mildred P., writer of foreword.

Series:

CARAF books.

CARAF Bks

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authors, French--20th century--Biography.

Authors, French.

Authors, Algerian--20th century--Biography.

Authors, Algerian.

Algerians--France--Social conditions.

Algerians.

Sebbar, Leïla.

Sebbar, Leïla--Family.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (118 pages)

Place of Publication:

Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, [2015]

Summary:

The celebrated and highly versatile writer Leïla Sebbar was born in French colonial Algeria but has lived nearly her entire adult life in France, where she is recognized as a major voice on the penetrating effects of colonialism in contemporary society. The dramatic contrast between her past and present is the subject of the nine autobiographical essays collected in this volume. Written between 1978 and 2006, they trace a journey that began in Aflou, Algeria, where her father ran a schoolhouse, and continued to France, where Sebbar traveled, alone, as a graduate student before eventually realizing her powerful creative vision. The pieces collected in this book capture an array of experiences, sensations, and sentiments surrounding the French colonial presence in Algeria and offer an intimate and prismatic reflection on Sebbar's bicultural upbringing as the child of an Algerian father and French mother. Sebbar paints an unflinching portrait of her original disconnection from her father's Arabic language and culture, depicting her struggle to revive a cultural heritage that her family had deliberately obscured and to convey the vibrant yet muted Arabic of her father and of Algeria. Looking back from numerous vantage points throughout her life, she presents the complicated and divisive dynamics of being raised "between two shores"--the colonized and the colonizer. CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780813937588

0813937582