Bacholle-Boškovic, Michèle

Dr. Michèle Bacholle-Boškovic is Associate Professor in French Studies at Eastern Connecticut State University. She has published extensively on contemporary French and Francophone women writers, as well as on Vietnamese cinema and the Algerian War. Her book on Annie Ernaux, Agota Kristof, and Farida Belghoul, Un passé contraignant. Double bind et transculturation, was published in 2000 by Editions Rodopi.

Linda LÊ, L’Écriture Du Manque

2006 0-7734-5925-1
This groundbreaking study, the first ever published on Linda Lê, a young albeit prolific writer of Vietnamese origin whose fiction shocked readers by its violence and cruelty and challenged critics by its complexity, explores the issue of ‘lack’ (manque) in three areas of Lê’s rich works: of rootedness in her writing, of loving relationships, of the father figure and nurturing mother. Lê’s displaced, exiled status is not foreign to the Deleuzean postmodernist aspects of her prose and to the pharmakon nature (both poison and remedy) of her texts. The study further demonstrates the difficulty of personal relationships in Lê’s works; while Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse only applies here to incestuous, fraternal relationships, Derrida’s The Post Card continues to shed light on the father-daughter relationship. The conclusion presents a lighter side of Lê often overlooked by critics, i.e., humor and playfulness, and the fantastic. In addition to being rigorous in its method and original in its approach, this study makes Lê’s works less daunting, more approachable to academics and graduate students. It will appeal to scholars in contemporary French and Francophone Studies, Asian literature, as well as Women’s Studies, Postmodernism, and Postcolonial Studies.