BUMIDOM (1963–1982) and its Afterlives

Antonia Wimbush is Lecturer in French Studies in the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. From 2020 to 2023 she was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film at the University of Liverpool. Her previous publications include Autofiction: A Female Francophone Aesthetic of Exile (2021) and Queer(y)ing Bodily Norms in Francophone Culture (2021), co-edited with Polly Galis and Maria Tomlinson. Her research interests include French Caribbean literature, literary representations of exile and migration, memory studies, and gender studies.

• Acknowledgements Introduction: Memorialising Migration1. A History of the BUMIDOM2. Gender, Work and Race in Caribbean Life Writing3. National Identity, Diasporic Citizenship and Postdiaspora: The BUMIDOM in Fiction4. Racism and Classism in Film and Television5. Migration, Memory and Pedagogy in Graphic Novels and Children’s Fiction6. Music as Memory: The Legacy of the BUMIDOMConclusion: Remembering the BUMIDOM TodayBibliographyIndex

Drawing on fieldwork, extensive archival research and analysis of a rich corpus of literature, music and film, Antonia Wimbush tells a story of migration from the Caribbean to Europe that has been largely silenced in France itself. Recovering occluded narratives and reflecting on their contemporary afterlives, this account of BUMIDOM as a postcolonial lieu de mémoire constitutes a highly significant intervention. The result is essential reading for all serious scholars and students of the French Caribbean, of post-war France – and of the histories of migration more broadly.