The Accent Complex

Abstract

No matter how long they have lived in France and irrespective of their ability to express themselves in French, writers from outside France find that their French interlocutors consistently subject them to questions focusing on where they come from. Chapter 4 explores this obsession with origins that is often couched in expressions of admiration for an accent. Those who were born in France apparently presume that commenting on the way a woman speaks constitutes an innocent observation, an anodyne remark that will allow them access to a backstory on how she came to speak that way. Whether they are well-intentioned or not, such queries are nonetheless often prying and inappropriate, and they make many foreign-born women writers feel self-conscious when they utter even the shortest phrase in French. Paradoxically, this discomfort in oral exchanges often enhances these authors’ written productivity, prompting them to produce literary creations that place an accent on other, often ignored experiences in their adopted land, on the plights of immigrants and migrants of different ages and birthplaces who have endured xenophobic attitudes in France.