« Voicing my desire to her ». Poétique du désir et coming-out littéraire dans les nouvelles « On Monday of Last Week » et « Grace »

• Main Author: Sophie Okunhon
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université Toulouse - Jean Jaurès 2020-04-01
• Series: Miranda: Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone
• Subjects: desire; subversive writing; transgression; coming-out narrative
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/26847

The article analyzes the writing of lesbian desire in two short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chinelo Okparanta, and the connection between transgression and subversive writing. The articulation of female same‑sex desire hinges on three ideas : the desired body and its construction, the role of religion and its repercussion on desire, and the intimate through the workings of imagination. By their prudence, revealed by a paradoxical triumph of the female characters’ (in)validated same‑sex desire, the writers are in keeping with the concept of emergence, or what we call a coming‑out narrative since they unprecedentedly resist dominant discourses. Rejecting all moralizing aspects, they name this female same‑sex desire otherwise perceived as absurd and question gender and sexual premises to articulate, in a new feminist literature, the right of women to own their bodies and to fulfill their desires. Consequently, writing forbidden desire mirrors the writers’ wish to place women at the forefront of the literary scene.