I made it through the first day

I just finished my first day of my French class.

I have not found out the results of my placement test yet. That will happen tomorrow morning. I am hoping I place into the higher intermediate or the advanced. We'll see, though.

Today in the afternoon we had the option of attending lectures. These were a chance to for us to gain some personal educational fulfillment, I assume. We are not tested on the material and they are not directly related to learning French. I chose to go the lecture of "Le francais - langue plurielle. La représentation du français chez des écrivains d'expression française en dehors de la France." Loosely translated: "French - a pluralistic language. French writing by authors outside of France." I thought it would be interesting, especially because in college I did an independent study course on the concept of the French-Maghrebian woman's identity. I was hoping to hear the professor talk about the Maghreb identity as well as authors that were not francophone that chose to express themselves in French .

During the lecture I wrote on the back of my sheet of paper "I find that there is a difference between authors that come from former colonies and french speaking countries. The first choose to write in a language of their oppressors. The second are using their native language. There is even a third category of French writers, those that choose the French language, even though they are not native speakers. " I don't think that we can lump all French writers that are not from France together simply because they are not from France. As a québécois author that the professor quoted pointed out, "Le français est ma langue maternelle. J'écris dans ma langue maternelle....C'est ma langue maternelle et je n'en ai pas d'autre" (French is my native language. I write in my native language. ... It is my native language and I don't have any other). When we put these francophone authors together with those of francophone authors from previous colonies of France or Belgium we are negating the experience of colonialism. I do not think we can begin to understand their writing unless we understand their context.

What she did talk about was how French has been viewed as a "universal" language for centuries, dating back to when Marco Polo wrote his book, "Le livre des merveilles" in French. I am not negating the importance of French, but I think that she could have approached the topic in a more nuanced way. I was also upset that NONE of the authors she mentioned were women.