troisoiseaux

I think Avice is an unreliable narrator, and that her ex is actually right. The Arieki begin to lose their language and their culture, as so many native cultures have done, as the result of colonialism. I haven't looked to see what's been written about it in years, but I remember friends getting rather heated with me, because no, they were sure it was a positive ending. (I also haven't reread it in a very long while so my grasp of detail is limited now.)

But colonizing cultures always think we're doing the right thing, or at least we used to. Now we question more. My conference paper was titled "Can the Arieki Speak?" after Gayatri Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?"