Writing from the Hearth: Public, Domestic, and Imaginative Space in Francophone Women's Fiction of Africa and the Caribbean

Writing from the Hearth probes the relationship of gender to space in close readings of texts of Francophone women writers of Africa: Aoua KZita, Mariama B%, Calixthe Beyala, and Aminata Sow Fall, and the Caribbean: Marie Chauvet, Simon Schwarz-Bart, Maryse CondZ, and Edwidge Danticat. It explores the hypothesis that the female protagonist moves toward empowerment by appropriating public space and transforming domestic space into alternative space.