“Insights in Contemporary Franco-America in Rhea Côté-Robins and Gregoire Chabot: Reevaluating Memory, Identity and Place"
Résumé
Dr. Peggy Pacini’s paper “Insights into Contemporary Franco-America in Rhéa Côté-Robbins and Gregoire Chabot: Reevaluating Memory, Identity and Place” extends the discussion of Franco-American identity-formation and the role of a specific place (Maine) in this act by examining the paratexts of two contemporary Franco-American writers from Maine, Rhea Côté-Robbins and Gregoire Chabot. Pacini explores how each author has tried to create “a newer and more appropriate” identity, neither Franco nor American, but Franco-American from Maine. While it may be true that Côté-Robbins and Chabot have, through their writing, found their unique voices and a way to tell their unique stories, their works always start from memory, collective and personal, deeply rooted in place and time either to achieve piecing together a fragmented identity for the former, or interrogating it for the latter.