University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses March 2019 ENGAGED, MULTICULTURAL INDIVIDUALISM IN THE MILLENNIAL WORKS OF MARYSE CONDÉ AND ZADIE SMITH Nicole Calandra University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Comparative Literature Commons Recommended Citation Calandra, Nicole, "ENGAGED, MULTICULTURAL INDIVIDUALISM IN THE MILLENNIAL WORKS OF MARYSE CONDÉ AND ZADIE SMITH" (2019). Doctoral Dissertations. 1510. https://doi.org/10.7275/nqqg-9021 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1510 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ENGAGED, MULTICULTURAL INDIVIDUALISM IN THE MILLENNIAL WORKS OF MARYSE CONDÉ AND ZADIE SMITH A Dissertation Presented by NICOLE M. CALANDRA Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2019 Comparative Literature © Copyright by Nicole M. Calandra 2019 All Rights Reserved ENGAGED, MULTICULTURAL INDIVIDUALISM IN THE MILLENNIAL WORKS OF MARYSE CONDÉ AND ZADIE SMITH A Dissertation Presented by NICOLE M. CALANDRA Approved as to style and content by: ____________________________________ William Moebius, Chair ____________________________________ Kathryn M. Lachman, Member ____________________________________ Dianne E. Sears, Member ____________________________________ Dawn Fulton, Member __________________________________________ Robert Sullivan, Chair Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures __________________________________________ Moira Inghilleri, Director Comparative Literature Program Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures DEDICATION For Stella ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Throughout my doctoral studies, I have had the extreme good fortune to receive support and guidance from some truly wonderful people. I would be remiss if I did not begin by offering my deepest gratitude to Kathryn Lachman, without whose determination, encouragement, and support this project would never have been completed. I wish every graduate student could have such a mentor. To William Moebius: thank you for chairing my committee but, more importantly, thank you for being a positive force for good in Comparative Literature. From my first days in the program to my last, you have offered me and my fellow students a foundation of reassurance and reason, while providing important insights into how to balance our teaching and research. To my other committee members, Dawn Fulton and Dianne Sears: Dawn, thank you for sharing your time, wisdom, and interest in Maryse Condé with me in so many ways—and for always greeting my questions with kindness and thoughtfulness. Dianne, thank you for providing an excellent example of quiet integrity for me to follow—and for showing me how French literature should be taught. To Linda Papirio and Jean Fleming, the office managers who hold all the pieces together while stressed-out students are spinning out of control, thank you for your time and patience. To my cohort of fellow dissertation drafters, Kanchuka Dharmasiri, Hongmei Sun, Antonia Carcelen, and Daniel Pope, thank you for the inspiration and motivation. With you by my side, there was no library or coffee shop in the five college area that v couldn’t be turned into a literary think tank. Without you by my side, the first draft of my dissertation probably would never have existed. To all my friends in the Capital District, thank you for your never-ending words of support. To Pauline Thompson, thank you for the gift of time in the week before my defense. To Pattie and Tarik Wareh, thank you for your goodness, your openness, and your helpfulness. To Jim and Carol McCord, thank you for believing in me, listening to me, and sharing your time and love with me, BK, and, especially, Stella. To April Selley, I am grateful for every year of friendship we were able to share. I’ll never forget all the times you encouraged me to see my project through to the end, and I just wish you were still here to see it. I just wish you were still here, full stop. To my BMC family, thank you all for two entire decades of friendship, laughter, and helping me finish my writing projects. To my parents, thank you for, well, everything: simply put, your unconditional love and support have made anything I’ve ever done possible. I can never repay you for everything you’ve given me; I can only hope to follow your example. To my beautiful little nuclear family: BK, my partner and best friend, I both literally and figuratively couldn’t have done this without you. I am forever humbled by your steadfast belief in me and enthusiasm for my work. Stella, my miraculous daughter, I wouldn’t have done this without you. You are the center of my world and I am so grateful that I get to be your mother. As you pursue your own goals in life, I hope you are as lucky in finding good helpers on your journey as I have been on mine. vi ABSTRACT ENGAGED, MULTICULTURAL INDIVIDUALISM IN THE MILLENNIAL WORKS OF MARYSE CONDÉ AND ZADIE SMITH FEBRUARY 2019 NICOLE M. CALANDRA, A.B., BRYN MAWR COLLEGE M.A., BRYN MAWR COLLEGE M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor William Moebius In “Engaged, Multicultural Individualism in the Millennial Works of Maryse Condé and Zadie Smith,” I explore the way these authors of the Caribbean diaspora represent the particular challenges characters face when they try to construct individual identities while also managing past traumas and future anxieties in multicultural contexts. I argue that the only path to success is through the development of a humor perspective similar to that of Condé’s and Smith’s third-person narrators, whose humorous, mocking tone, particularly at moments of crisis, creates the critical distance necessary for constructing an autonomous individual identity. The first chapter argues that philosophical insights about unpredictability and interconnectedness in White Teeth and La migration des cœurs unite Smith and Condé with Caribbean theorists Antonio Benítez-Rojo and Edouard Glissant as well as the science of Chaos to form an important part of the millennial zeitgeist. vii The second chapter explores curses, revenge, and satire as indirect ways of writing judgment of the past onto the present in three Condé novels: Traversée de la mangrove, La migration des cœurs, and Célanire cou-coupé. Each novel features an enigmatic central character interpellated by a painful past they cannot ignore. Taken together, these novels represent the characters’ progression toward new forms of authorship and self-determination in the present. The third chapter focuses on how to construct an identity in the present without relying on a sense of belonging: to a family, a nation, an ethnic group, or an ideology. I discuss how characters in Condé’s Desirada and Smith’s White Teeth and On Beauty are prompted by mockery from respected figures in their lives to abandon the original course of their clichéd identity quests and seek new levels of self-awareness instead. This dissertation is therefore organized as a series of insights that build on one another. It moves from anxiety about the future and angst about the past to the ultimate liberation of the present, a necessary progression for individuals in multicultural contexts where multiple possibilities for identification coexist with inter-and intra-group tensions. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………….…v ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………..vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 1. CHAOTIC REALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM IN ZADIE SMITH’S WHITE TEETH AND MARYSE CONDÉ’S LA MIGRATION DES CŒURS…………………………………………………………………………..11 Introduction………………………………………………………………………11 Chaotic Realism in White Teeth………………………………………………….18 Chaotic Individualism in La migration des cœurs……………………………….43 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….75 2. CONDÉ’S SUPERNATURAL SATIRE IN TRAVERSÉE DE LA MANGROVE, LA MIGRATION DES CŒURS, AND CÉLANIRE COU- COUPÉ……………..............................................................................................77 Introduction………………………………………………………………………77 The Cursed One: Francis Sancher in Traversée de la mangrove………………...84 The Satirist Satirized: Razyé from La migration des cœurs….………………...105 The Fantastical Satirist: Célanire from Célanire cou-coupé….…………………..122 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...136 3. HUMOR, MOCKERY AND IDENTITY QUESTS IN THE CARIBBEAN DIASPORA…………………………………………………………………….139 Introduction…………………………………………………………………….139 Monstrous Liberations in Désirada…………………………………………….144 Mocking Mirrors in White Teeth……………………………………………….161 Constructive Delusions in On Beauty………………………………………….185 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...203 CONCLUSION ………………………………………………………………………...205 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………208 ix INTRODUCTION Pourquoi cette angoisse devant la réalité du chaos-monde dont il semble qu’il soit l’objet le plus haut de littérature aujourd’hui? Parce que nous voyons bien que la conscience non naïve de cette totalité ne peut plus … passer par cette sécurisation que procurait, dans L’Iliade ou l’Ancien