Fren 202: Intermediate French, part 2

This lesson ¹

A special thanks to my colleague Dr. Yvon Lebras, a specialist on Gabrielle Roy. Professor Lebras suggested this reading and shared with me a recent article he wrote on Roy.

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represents a second sample of "Francophone Voices." In lesson 17, you read some poetry of colonial subjects alienated from their identities because of France’s mission civilisatrice. In this lesson, you will read about another kind of alienation: alienation from oneself and from one’s own country. A French Canadian female author, Gabrielle Roy is already part of a minority in the world of French literature. Her novel, Bonheur d’occasion (1945) portrays the harsh realities of the marginalized working class of Montreal. At the same time, as in nearly all of her novels, an autobiographical current plays a strong role in her fiction.This mixture of fiction and self-exploration has recently been called "autofiction." In this lesson, you will read an excerpt from an unfinished posthumously-published autobiography that struggles with the ever-shifting nature of identity.