Leïla Sebbar

Leïla Sebbar (born 1941) is an Algerian-born French writer. Qoutes Beneath the French language I hear the language of my father's mother. It is no longer silent. I want to hear them, write them in my mother's language, to gain access to the father, to the silence of his language — Arabic, the Arabic of my father. I use writing to unify the two different languages my parents gave me. I write about the violence of imposed silence, of exile, of division. I write about my father's land—colonized, mistreated, savagely deported. I write this in my mother's language. It is how I can live as daughter of my father and of my mother. I am there at the crossroads, serene at last, finally in my place; for I am a croisée seeking a connection; writing within a lineage, one that is always the same. It is tied to history, to memory, to identity, to tradition, and to transmission, by which I mean the search for ascendants and descendants, seeking a place in the history of a family, a community, a people with regard to History and the universe. It is in fiction that I feel that I am a free subject (free of father, mother, clan, dogma) and strengthened by the burden of exile. Only there do I muster body and soul to span the two banks, both upstream and downstream. External link Category:Authors from Algeria