Abstract

In recent years, non-native language writers have gradually emerged in the French literary world. Andreï Makine (b. 1957) was born in Russia and used French, the language that his maternal grandmother read stories to him in, to write his autobiographical novel Le Testament Français (Dreams of My Russian Summers). The novel describes his childhood memories of growing up, as well as a fascination and yearning for far-away French culture that his grandmother developed in him. Marjane Satrapi (b. 1969) from Iran used her story of growing up in Iran to draw Persepolis and made French her primary creative language. Through the eyes of an Iranian girl who sought Western culture, the comic described the limitations of Islamic culture and the doctrinal strictures of its theocracy. It also re-examined the issue of self-identity. This article attempts to use these two writings as the starting point for a comparative analysis of their narrators’ perspective, the intersection of languages, and the roles of characters in the story to explore the diaspora and trauma writing strategies of the two writers: Are there political factors? Is it their aversion or denial of their homeland? Or is it another interpretation of self-identification?