Literary negotiations of hybrid identity: French narratives on young female Romani migrants in France–A case study

Abstract

Abstract:The article deals with the identity formation and coming-of-age processes of Romani girls who have migrated from Romania to France. First, some more general reflections on the identity formation processes of young women in diasporic Roma communities are made. In this context, identity hybridization processes are described with Bhabha's "third space" concept. Following this, the literary staging of such identity negotiations will be examined using the example of two selected French narratives: the fictional life story Gadji! (2008) by the non-Romani writer Lucie Land on the one hand and the semi-autobiographal Je suis Tzigane et je le reste (I'm a Gypsy and I remain one, 2014) by Anina Ciuciu (and co-authored by the non-Romani journalist Frédéric Veille) on the other. At the same time, the question will be asked whether and which differences can be observed between the presentation from an external viewpoint or that of a self-perspective and how these differences should be interpreted.