Abstract

The quest for a place in which the self feels at home, comfortable, and secure pervades postcolonial literature, criticism, and theory. Likewise, the themes of location/dislocation, belonging/marginalization, alienation and identity—central to the problematic of home—have been among the major topics of critical inquiry and creative expression in contemporary literature. Contrapuntally entwined with these themes are the strategies of resistance and survival through which those dislocated invent a space of their own and alternative modes of identity. This article examines the processes and mechanisms through which displaced women "place" themselves at home, in exile and abroad, in Guadeloupean Gisèle Pineau's works. Indeed, with subtle interplay on the multi meanings of alienation, estrangement, and (dis)possession, Pineau explores the location of women in cultural, political, and social communities—primarily in France and in Guadeloupe—from a perspective informed by race, gender, nationhood. and history.

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