Chapter 16 - Biological and Narrative Reproduction in the Family-Saga Novels of Maryse Condé

Summary

The family saga novel – predicated on the assumption of knowable genealogies and on the conceit that the stories of single families can convey the stories of nations – is a fertile and yet fraught territory for Caribbean writers. Maryse Condé has explored this territory more extensively than any other; her novels both reiterate the appeal of genealogical claims and register a clear-eyed suspicion of the notion of lineage and the mythologizing that attends it. Focusing mostly on Tree of Life and The Last of the African Kings, this chapter examines Condé’s mapping of women’s role in biological and narrative reproduction – the essential processes of family formation across time and space, and therefore the engines that power diasporic family sagas. Condé elucidates how this dual reproductive role continually brings women up against the demands and strictures of patriarchy, impacts their erotic and intellectual autonomy, and structurally determines their relationships to other women.