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(Robin 2000, 11). Observing her daughter’s life in Jerusalem, she finds that her daughter, who learned Hebrew, also felt the same foreignness through languages: After all these efforts to learn the language, to adapt yourself, to make your hole, to feel at ease … To invent its own language To coil yourself up in Hebrew like you Or in English like me To live with French or to the contrary To be a wanderer of Multilingualism (28, 34–35) Even after experiencing various languages (English, German, French, Polish, and Hebrew), they cannot feel at ease [“sentir chez soi”] anywhere, and they intend to move to Montreal, as they hope to form their identity in their new multilingual city: “In Montreal, one feels fine. Do you really believe it? Of Course! One speaks French there, and one does not feel like being forced to speak the language of strangers” (Robin 2000, 47). This is also a city where their “lost” language, Yiddish, still exists: “In Montreal, there is a fragility of language, of their language like a tissue, and it reminds one of the aged whospeak Yiddish…one must be Jewish to understand how one feels if one does not have one’s own language” (47–48). They try to find out their identities in this multilingual culture, not as Québécois or Jews, but as migrants: “In Montreal, one would be fine, just because one will not be completely at ease …a space to be able to easily breathe, a place in the midway between inside and outside” (48). This is a culture characterized by pluriethnicity, where foreigners are allowed to construct their identities as migrants in the space of hors-lieu. This is fundamentally different from Canadian “multi-culturalism,” which intends to form a unique identity combining various ethnic characteristics. Robin uses several characteristics of pluriethnicity and cosmopolitanism tocharacterize Montrealculture. Her constructionof migrant identitythrough her experiences are reflected in her protagonist’s discourses in La Québécoite, as she claims that this is her “autofiction in intellectual meaning.” There are roughly four steps in the development of her relationship with Montreal culture: non-coincidence, a recognition of nomad identity, a discovery of hors-lieu, and an identification of foreignness (devenir étranger). First, Robin’s identity formation begins with her recognition of Montreal culture, which is often characterized by multiethnicity or hybridity. Robin’s protagonist in La Québécoite is Jewish and emigrated from France. Her impression of the cosmopolitan Montreal culture is of: “The cosmoYuko Yamade| 240 politan city where one hears all sorts of languages, where smells of all markets in the world will assail you…hybridity of forms, of sounds, a richness of differences” (Robin 1993a: 208–209). In this culture, she identifies herself by non-coïncidence. This term is explained by Robin as “non-coïncidence qui permettrait peut-être l’emergence d’un espace nomade” (non-coincidence which will make the nomad space exist) (1992, 25). Her protagonist is a French woman, but in Quebec, the language is different than in France. In describing her discovery of the differences between French and Québécois , she describes Québécois as “the language which is not completely yours.” (1993a,52).As her mother tongue is Yiddish, she finds a double nonco ïncidence through her immigration to Montreal. From this experience, she finds that she has a nomadic characteristic in her identity, which ties her to those people who belong nowhere and continue to live in the space between cultures and national boundaries. Robin defines nomadism as “a space of migrant writing which marks outside” (1992, 25). As her protagonist does not understand the “sense” of languages in Quebec, she begins to see the gaps between languages, and these gaps are what migrant Québécois writers describe in their writings. As her protagonist says: There is no messiah. There is no story Just a voice of plurality a voice of crossroad. (2000, 90) As Robin’s protagonist in La Québécoite finds her hors-lieu (not-place, place outside established categories), she begins to form her identity as a migrant in that space. Simon Hamel calls this process devenir-étranger. This concept does not refer to those who wander between cultures and languages, or who try to deny the categories of immigrants, that is, those who stay inhors-lieu [not-place] and who inscribe their discoveries and inventions in their writings . Robin explains it in...

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