Practical session: transformation of texts

This session was developed as part of a course on textual practices, canonisation, and curation of texts in colonial/postcolonial contexts. It allowed the students to test out some creative intertextual practice for themselves. However, in the context of teaching representations of migration, this practical task can offer a way of getting behind media headlines about migration and can spark discussion about humanity, emotion, and ethics in representing migration, and the importance of artistic representations in this regard. You can choose any article from French or Francophone journalism about migration that best fits your course. An example is provided here -(Resource 2 – to follow)

You could expand/adapt this task to include producing various interpretations of the journalistic text using other art forms, including visual arts/other text types to suit your course.

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The practical task

Ask students to read the article you have selected and to discuss in pairs/as a small group. Draw out the human experiences of the subjects in the article. 

Working in pairs, ask students to select a paragraph/short section of the article to transform using Tadjo’s style. Return to the extracts (or others that you have selected from the book) and identify key stylistic features/ways of writing employed by Tadjo, e.g. 

• the use of ‘je’ at various points;
• the use of an omniscient ‘bird’s eye view’ narrator at others;
• a focus on very particular sounds, smells, sights;
• use of repetition, poetic devices, short sentences, etc. 

Ask students to select one extract to work from in terms of style and transform the journalistic text into something resembling the poetry and sensual elements from A Vol d’Oiseau. 

Ask students to share their texts and discuss the effects of transforming the original text in this way.