Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature explores an aspect of modern French literature that has been consistently overlooked in literary histories: the relationship between the colonies—their cultures, languages, and people—and formal shifts in French literary production. Starting from the premise that neither cultural identity nor cultural production can be pure or homogenous, Leslie Barnes initiates a new discourse on the French literary canon by examining the work of three iconic French writers with personal connections to Vietnam: André Malraux, Marguerite Duras, and Linda Lê. In a thorough investigation of the authors’ linguistic, metaphysical, and textual experiences of colonialism, Barnes articulates a new way of reading French literature: not as an inward-looking, homogenous, monolingual tradition, but rather as a tradition of intersecting and interdependent peoples, cultures, and experiences. One of the few books to focus on Vietnam’s position within francophone literary scholarship, Barnes challenges traditional concepts of French cultural identity and offers a new perspective on canonicity and the division between “French” and “francophone” literature.

Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature explores an aspect of modern French literature that has been consistently overlooked in literary histories: the relationship between the colonies—their cultures, languages, and people—and formal shifts in French literary production. Starting from the premise that neither cultural identity nor cultural production can be pure or homogenous, Leslie Barnes initiates a new discourse on the French literary canon by examining the work of three iconic French writers with personal connections to Vietnam: André Malraux, Marguerite Duras, and Linda Lê. In a thorough investigation of the authors’ linguistic, metaphysical, and textual experiences of colonialism, Barnes articulates a new way of reading French literature: not as an inward-looking, homogenous, monolingual tradition, but rather as a tradition of intersecting and interdependent peoples, cultures, and experiences. One of the few books to focus on Vietnam’s position within francophone literary scholarship, Barnes challenges traditional concepts of French cultural identity and offers a new perspective on canonicity and the division between “French” and “francophone” literature.

Analyzes over two dozen novels written in French by Vietnamese authors since 1920, showing how they reflect & react against Vietnam1s colonial heritage.

"An important, well-conceived, and original piece of historical synthesis."—Peter Zinoman, author of The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam “Indochina is the first and best general history of French colonial Indochina from its inception in 1858 to its crumbling in 1954. It is the only work to avoid nationalist, colonialist, and anticolonialist historiographies in order to fully explore the ambiguity of the French colonial period. A major contribution to the national histories of France, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.”—Christopher Goscha, Université du Québec à Montréal

On Our Own Strength examines the political activities of the most influential intellectual movement in interwar French-occupied Vietnam. The far-reaching work of the Self-Reliant Literary Group (Tự Lực Văn Đoàn) included applied design, urban reform, fashion, literature, journalism, and cartoons; its work was deeply political in both form and intent. The Group drew upon a wide range of global intellectual currents and practices to build an enlightened public that would one day serve as the basis of a modern Vietnamese nation. Its nationalist vision sought a nonviolent middle path between colonialism and anticolonial struggle, advocating a process of gradual decolonization that ultimately ended in Vietnamese autonomy. This form of cosmopolitan nationalism proved tremendously popular among ordinary Vietnamese and necessarily shaped local politics, influencing the political agenda of even rival groups such as the newly revived Indochinese Communist Party (ICP). On Our Own Strength shows how the Group’s vision framed the ways ICP positioned itself and sought popular support in the years leading up to the August Revolution and beyond. In later years, the party attempted to erase the Group’s early influence on national politics, banning their writings and casting them as little more than bourgeois literary figures. In recovering the Group’s unique response to the world around them, this book bridges the areas of political, cultural, and intellectual history, drawing them together into a rich narrative of Vietnamese nation-building from the bottom-up within a larger global context​. On Our Own Strength offers a dynamic model for the field of Vietnamese studies as it continues to move beyond Cold War political narratives of its most tumultuous period. This book engages broadly with global history, European history, and imperial studies to explore colonialism’s hybrid cultural and political forms. Martina Thucnhi Nguyen examines how the Self-Reliant Literary Group weighed in on everything from women’s fashion and public housing to the major political ideologies of their era, in a unique style that mixed French-inflected ideas with Vietnamese norms and forms. As a deep case study of important figures on the Vietnamese moderate left, On Our Own Strength provides an injection of color and nuance into a history that is often too monochromatic.​​

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

In the first decades after the end of French rule, Francophone authors engaged in an exercise of rewriting narratives from the colonial literary canon. In The Author as Cannibal, Felisa Vergara Reynolds presents these textual revisions as figurative acts of cannibalism and examines how these literary cannibalizations critique colonialism and its legacy in each author’s homeland. Reynolds focuses on four representative texts: Une tempête (1969) by Aimé Césaire, Le temps de Tamango (1981) by Boubacar Boris Diop, L’amour, la fantasia (1985) by Assia Djebar, and La migration des coeurs (1995) by Maryse Condé. Though written independently in Africa and the Caribbean, these texts all combine critical adaptation with creative destruction in an attempt to eradicate the social, political, cultural, and linguistic remnants of colonization long after independence. The Author as Cannibal situates these works within Francophone studies, showing that the extent of their postcolonial critique is better understood when they are considered collectively. Crucial to the book are two interviews with Maryse Condé, which provide great insight on literary cannibalism. By foregrounding thematic concerns and writing strategies in these texts, Reynolds shows how these rewritings are an underappreciated collective form of protest and resistance for Francophone authors.

The Migrant Canon in Twenty-First-Century France explains the causes of twenty-first-century global migrations and their impact on French literature and the French literary establishment. A marginal genre in 1980s France, since the turn of the century "migrant literature" has become central to criticism and publishing. Oana Sabo addresses previously unanswered questions about the proliferation of contemporary migrant texts and their shifting themes and forms, mechanisms of literary legitimation, and notions of critical and commercial achievement. Through close readings of novels (by Mathias Énard, Milan Kundera, Dany Laferrière, Henri Lopès, Andreï Makine, Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Alice Zeniter, and others) and sociological analyses of their consecrating authorities (including the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée, the Académie française, publishing houses, and online reviewers), Sabo argues that these texts are best understood as cultural commodities that mediate between literary and economic forms of value, academic and mass readerships, and national and global literary markets. By examining the latest literary texts and cultural agents not yet subjected to sufficient critical study, Sabo contributes to contemporary literature, cultural history, migration studies, and literary sociology.

This sound interpretation of Vietnamese cultural attitudes contends that a major reason for American difficulties in Viet-Nam has been the failure to appreciate how wide the gulf is between Viet-Nam and the West. Professor Smith first describes Vietnamese political and social traditions and shows how they were challenged by the West after 1858. He examines Viet-Nam's search for independence and modernization in the first half of this century, contrasts the two governments of the partitioned country during the years 1954-1963, and stresses the critical need to reassess attitudes toward Viet-Nam. His sophisticated, ambitious survey of Viet-Nam history will have a lasting value that sets it apart from the scores of ephemeral books on this country.

Post-Migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France offers a critical assessment of the ways in which French writers, filmmakers, musicians and other artists descended from immigrants from former colonial territories bring their specificity to bear on the bounds and applicability of French republicanism, “Frenchness” and national identity, and contemporary cultural production in France.