For Further Research
Darlington, Sonja. “Calixthe Beyala’s Manifesto and Fictional Theory.” Research in African Literatures 34.2 (2003): 41-52. In this article, Darlington states her thesis on page 42: “My position is that Beyala’s contribution to African literature consists of two aspects: one, her brilliant manifesto on behalf of the girlchild-woman through which she critiques the ideological determinism that thwarts the development of girl-children and women; and two, her ability to use fictional theorizing to demonstrate a girlchild-woman’s efforts to know and to become a human being.” |
Arenberg, Nancy. “Body Subversion in Calixthe Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga.” Dalhouise French Studies 45 (1998): 111-20. In this article, Arenberg explores how Beyala employs the black African female body to argue that Tanga’s bodily symptoms reinforce her painful stories but the telling presents a challenge to the patriarchal abuses of power in that Tanga breaks her silence and shares her story. |
Jean-Charles, Régine Michelle. “Toward a Victim-Survivor Narrative: Rape and Form in Yvonne Vera’s Under the Tongue and Calixthe Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga.” Research in African Literatures 45.1 (2014): 39-62. In this article, Jean-Charles argues that the term “victim-survivor” should be used when discussing the protagonists’ experiences in Vera’s Under the Tongue and Beyala’s Your Name Shall Be Tanga. The designation of “victim-survivor” resists emphasizing one over the other—victim or survivor. |
Köhler, Sigrid G. “Mad Body-Gifts: A Postcolonial Myth of Motherhood in Calixthe Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga.” Matatu 29.1 (2005): 31-46. In this article, Köhler argues that Your Name Shall Be Tanga is a hybrid text that challenges not only African patriarchy but European colonialism. She reads the merging of Tanga and Anna-Claude at the novel’s end as creating a “new, hybrid character” (38). A paradox exists in which the two women can no longer be separated but they also cannot be completely integrated. (By implication, Köhler is suggesting that a postcolonial subject can no longer be completely separate from the European colonists/escape the Western influence OR completely integrated and restored to a precolonial African mentality.) |
Mouflard, Claire. “Haunted Bodies and Haunting Memories: Transference and
Transcendence of ‘h/Histoires’ in Calixthe Beyala’s Tu t’appelleras Tanga.” Romance Notes 51.2 (2011): 171-78. In this article, Mouflard clearly states her argument towards the top of page 172: “My goal in this paper will be to prove that Beyala is not a literary fraud.” To show that Beyala is not guilty of plagiarism, Mouflard examines Beyala’s second novel, Your Name Shall Be Tanga, which is a story about a black girl trusting her story to a white woman. Mouflard argues that the alleged plagiarism “stems from a history of colonial abuse that left its victims with no other choice than to entrust the white voice with their stories, at the risk of losing their own agency” (172). The novel, which ends with Anna-Claude becoming Tanga, illustrates how “borders are transgressed” (172). |