Until around 2010, Winona State had a French major. Emerita French professor Rosine Tanenbaum taught a course about literature written in the French language by people who were citizens of nations other than France, which is sometimes called “Francophone literature.” Librarians Joe Mount and Joe Jackson worked with her to enhance our Francophone literature collection. Some of those books are on our retention list. 

Assia Djebar was an Algerian novelist and a Muslim feminist. She was the first writer from the Maghreb to be elected to the Academie Francaise. Aime Cesaire was a poet and politician from Martinique. He was a founder of the Negritude Movement in French literature. 

Djebar, Assia. La disparition de la langue française: roman. Paris: Albin Michel, 2003. 

Césaire, Aimé, and William Shakespeare. Une Tempête: Théâtre: d’après “La Tempête” de Shakespeare: adaptation pour un théâtre nègre. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997. 

Recap: In 2022, twenty-four Minnesota libraries joined together in a commitment to retain over a half-million print books which are scarcely-held in Minnesota. It is called the Minnesota Shared Print Collection. Here is one of the stories from the Winona State share of the collection.