Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies Claire Mouflard’s article,“Race, Class, and the Imminence of Revolt in Leïla Slimani’s Chanson douce,” was published in the peer-reviewed journal Women in French in December 2024.
The article explores Leïla Slimani’s intersectional writing of race and identity politics in contemporary France, building on existing research that addressed themes of gender, class, motherhood, and domestic work. As Chanson douce seeks to uncover the white nanny’s motive for the murder of the couple’s two interracial children, Slimani’s construction of the character’s progressive descent into dire poverty and madness echoes French working class fears of imminent collapse.
In writing systemic racism within a localized, Parisian social commentary, Slimani skillfully addresses the woes of the lower French socio-economic class, and prefigures the uprising of the gilets jaunes.
