good happens

Faïza Guène’s novel Just Like Tomorrow provides insights into the life of Doria, a teenage girl living in a Parisian banlieue (suburban area). Her parents had emigrated from Morocco to France in  the hope of a better life. What they found, though, was poverty and marginality. When Doria was in her mid-teens, thus shortly before the events depicted in the novel, the family father left Doria and her mother to marry another woman in Morocco who finally gave birth to the father's long-awaited desire to have a son.

The novel displays an admirable change in the character of Doria. At the beginning, the girl, disappointed of every aspect of her live, is very pessimistic, extremely introverted and suffering under  a self-imposed state of mind which does not allow her to dream about a better future. But then good things started to happen in her life. One day the Super’s wife tells her about the woman looking for a baby-sitter and that she had thought of Doria – of her, and not of someone else. Other than that, Doria's mom got to go to alternating training where she learned to read and write and get help with her job search. Further, Doria attained the chance to start at a technical school which would enable her to make a hairdresser’s certificate. The guy who helped her with school also turned out to be really nice, and in the end, Doria could even stop seing her psychologist. These events essentially prompted Doria to see her life in a more positive light, which is very evident in the following remark: ‘With all the events, of this year, I was thinking that, frankly, life’s too unfair. But now just recently, I’ve changed my mind a bit … Lot’s of things have happened that have changed my point of view’ (Guène 2006: 72).

In addition to this positive transformation,  the novel also demonstrates the difficulties Doria has at first  to accept that something good can actually happen to her. She always expected the worst and to get disappointed. This negative perception of her environment seems also to hold her back of dreaming for the better and longing for achieving more. One example of such negativity are her teachers who gave her bad feedback, denying any capacity she could have. Why then should she work harder? The only teacher she liked is her plastic arts teacher who wrote Doria had “malleable skills”. Even though it does not mean a lot, according to Doria, she did appreciate it. Another example is when the social worker asked her about the last book Doria read and she rather makes her believe she had not read anything, even though she did read a book. Further, in terms of interpersonal contact, Doria was rather reserved, and also in this realm she got a lot of negative reactions, even without her doing anything beforehand. Her lazy, uninterested and reserved behavior could, thus, also be a defense mechanism to not become more disappointed, and as a consequence Doria actually fulfills the image people have of her - the effect of the so-called “self-fulfilling prophecy”.

Through the positive events, which occurred not only to Doria, but also to people around her, the protagonist’s behavior and perception changes, she becomes more positive and ambitious, and allows herself to dream again; she even contemplates going into politics one day. In the end instead of saying “kif-kif tomorrow” which means “same shit, different day” as she used to, Doria says “kiffe kiffe tomorrow”, using the verb kiffer which is utilized to say that you really like something or someone.

The novel further raises questions about how to read literary texts and how to treat what we read. Faïza Guène informs us before starting the novel that '[t]his is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, and events are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental' (Guène 2006: 4), nevertheless we are - or at least I am - very tempted to regard the story of Doria as true and reflecting social reality. As Leslie A. Adelson writes in Against Between: A Manifesto about political science and literary interpretation that although they generally employ very distinct approaches 'the growing and diverse field of Turco-German literature [or more general literature by (second) generation immigrants] may well be the only sector in literary studies today where an entrenched sociological positivism continues to hold sway. This positivist approach presumes that literature reflects empirical truths about migrants' lives' (Adelson 2002: 245). Adelson goes on that the writings are legitimated by the author's biographies and that '[m]eanwhile, the literary elephant in the room goes unremarked' (ibid.: 245). In regard to Guène's novel the author's biography shows striking similarities with the novel's protagonist. Both are children of immigrants and grew up in the Parisian banlieues, further, both experience positive events in their mid-teens.
The question arising then for me are: on what basis to we legitimize taking literary texts as reflections of  reality? What factors influence the perceived "realness" of a text? How, for example, would our perception change if the author of Just Like Tomorrow was French and born to non-immigrant French parents?

References:

- Adelson, Leslie A. "Against Between: A Manifesto." Unpacking Europe. Ed. Hassan, Salah and Iftikhar Dadi. Rotterdam: NAI Publishers Museum BoijmansVan Beuningen, 2002. 244-55. 

- Faiza Guène, Just Like Tomorrow, London: Definitions, 2006.