Emerging Afro-Parisian ‘chick-lit’ by Lauren Ekué and Léonora Miano

Abstract

This article examines the novels Icône urbaine (2005, Urban Icon) by French-Togolese writer Lauren Ekué and Blues pour Elise (2010, Blues for Elise) by French-Cameroonian/Afropean writer Léonora Miano, with regard to their contribution to chick-lit in a broad sense. With a focus on urban working women, their love lives and consumerism, these novels fulfil a number of criteria of mainstream chick-lit. At the same time, however, a serious concern for structural power relations is inscribed into these texts. Both novelists make ample use of intermedial writing such as structural borrowing from and references to music, TV formats and the fashion press. I will analyse these narrative strategies and address how far Ekué and Miano copy, rewrite and reinvent the Anglo-American chick-lit genre from the transnational perspective of the African Diaspora in France and considering the peculiarities of black Paris as a space.