Neither Here nor There: Calixthe Beyala's Collapsing Homes

A voluntary exile from Cameroon, her native land, Calixthe Beyala has chosen France as her space of enunciation. This movement from former colony to former colonial power, an apparent repudiation of Africa for Europe, raises the question of the identity of home for Beyala. Where is home, for starters? On the one hand, can the country that has colonized your native land and is still refusing to acknowledge your existence be called home? On the other, can the homeland that failed to perform its nurturing function and that you have left in search of more hospitable places still be called home? The author's displacement has resulted in an ambiguity and ambivalence towards the idea of home that she has expressed directly or indirectly in her interviews, essays, and above all in her fiction.

This paper offers preliminary responses to the question of home for Beyala by examining her representation of Africa and Europe in C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée, Tu t'appelleras Tanga, Le petit prince de Belleville, and Maman a un amant. Beyala's fiction fits Andrew Gurr's description of the pattern of writings in exile. According to Gurr, writers in exile spend their first years reconstructing their homes in their works. This certainly seems to be the case for Beyala. Her first four novels can be broken down into two movements. Whereas the first two are set in postcolonial Africa and offer a backward glance, the last two are set in France. By considering each movement separately, I hope to demonstrate that each movement shows a reformulation of Beyala's idea of home.

In The Poetics of Space, French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard defines home as the crucial site of one's intimate life and a refuge. Bachelard uses the term espace heureux (felicitous space) to designate home. According to Bachelard, home is the anchor without which men and women become fragmented individuals. In the following I will demonstrate that the image of the continent that emerges out of Beyala's backward glance contrasts with Bachelard's description of home as a felicitous space. Instead, the continent is a collapsing home that cannot shelter or anchor its sons and daughters.

Through Beyala's backward glance, we encounter the image of an agonizing continent. The characters in her first two novels are evolving in an Africa struck by poverty and corruption, a collapsing continent. In both, Beyala offers elaborate descriptions of the physical setting. Thus in C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée, the inhabitants of the Quartier Général, a slum, are portrayed in the following manner:

[Ils] croupissent dans des maisons infestées de bestioles [. . .]. Ils ne rentreront plus chez eux, ils attendront là, crevant la dalle avec des accès de fièvre nostalgiques et des diarrhées progressistes, se liquéfiant dans la crasse comme un morceau de chocolat au soleil. (96)

[They] stagnate in houses infested with vermin [. . .]. They will wait here puncturing the pavement with attacks of nostalgic fever and progressive diarrhea, becoming liquid in the filth like a piece of chocolate in the sun. (73)

Tu t'appelleras Tanga is also set in a similar environment:

Partout des odeurs de poisson fumé, de bière, de cacahouètes et de rats morts, mélangés, brassés dans l'écœurement. Je chemine en méditant sur ces effluves de bouffe et de crasse. (98)

Everywhere there are smells of smoked fish, beer, peanuts and dead rats, all mixed together, churned up in nausea. I am strolling along, meditating over these emanations of grub and filth. (63)

In this text as in C'est le soleil qui m'a brûlée, the abundance of images of decay, detritus, and nauseating smells is an indication of the disastrous condition of the continent. Beyala's detailed descriptions are enough evidence that the continent is falling apart...