Stardust by Léonora Miano (review)

Reviewed by: Stardust by Léonora Miano Araceli Hernández-Laroche Miano, Léonora. Stardust. Bernard Grasset, 2022. ISBN 978-2-246-83183-9. Pp. 220. What sustains women struggling to fend off violence and hunger in the margins of French urban society? Stardust is an autobiographical novel by Léonora Miano, who waited years before attempting to revisit a painful chapter in her youth. Miano declares in the Preface, “Je connais la société française et sa propension à enfermer ses minorités en particulier dans les aspects dégradants” (8). Stardust is set in Paris when the author arrived twenty years earlier from Cameroon. The main character, Louise, another name Miano uses for herself, is a young mother raising her infant daughter, Bliss, as she struggles with housing instability and food insecurity. Louise’s life seemed to take a downturn when she lost her university scholarship and finds herself trying to stay off the streets as she cares for her child. Bliss’s unreliable father proved too much of a burden for Louise: “Lasse de l’errance en couple, incapable de continuer à se réveiller tous les matins dans une chambre d’hôtel différente qu’ils n’auraient pas les moyens de payer, elle avait préféré se débrouiller seule” (31). A fall from stability can happen quickly and getting back on track is a Sisyphean feat requiring time, resources, grit, and knowing how to navigate an opaque French bureaucratic system. Louise’s immigration status is complicated since she was awarded the opportunity to study in France; yet, her unexpected loss of academic funding and unplanned motherhood derailed her studies. Bliss, however, benefits from French citizenship and the state does not separate mothers from their children. As a female immigrant mostly abandoned by her network, including back in her native country, Louise knows that her gender both in Cameroon and in France frustrates her opportunities for acceptance with family and society. Furthermore, Louise feels resentment toward the former colonial power and its current administration, which she sees as dehumanizing individuals in search for meaningful support. Most of the French officials in public services, such as in the women’s shelter on Rue de Crimée, where Louise begins to learn how to navigate the system, display a lack of empathy and some freely make demeaning judgments on parenting or immigrant status. The palpable bias can further paralyze the hopes of women already caught in a spiral of despair and survival. The message is clear: women like Louise are not priorities in France. Hiding that sentiment is not a concern nor is the effort to hide women in vulnerable situations from public view. Her experience has taught her that “Toute nation repose sur des fictions. Dans celles qu’on nous conte de la France, il n’y a pas d’exclusion sociale. Pas d’endroits où les marginaux sont entassés, refoulés” (43). As Louise traverses a modern Kafkaesque urban journey, she persists by taking solace in the poetry and literature of Francophone and Anglophone Black authors known for inspiring solidarity, resilience, and dignity. Cri de cœur words like those that Maya Angelou wrote, “Leaving behind the nights of terror and fear I rise,” (13) sustain Louise in the most vulnerable moments of self-doubt. [End Page 245] Araceli Hernández-Laroche University of South Carolina Upstate Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French