In 1984 Leïla Sebbar published Le Chinois vert d’Afrique, a novel that explores what it means to live as a “croisé” in France. The young hero of the book, Momo, comes from a mixed ethnic background that includes a Vietnamese grandmother and an Algerian grandfather. Their nationalities support the title for the book and the boy’s moniker among his friends, Le Chinois vert d’Afrique. With this novel Sebbar brings to the fore several key concepts for the understanding of immigrant identity in France: classification and declassification; exile; and splintering.

In my paper I examine these specific categories as they are highlighted in Sebbar’s novel. Her depiction of the croisé is unique in that it does not merely seek to cross two distinct boundaries (as is the case in novels that make use of bi-cultural heroes or heroines), but works to manifest a crossing that is multiple and in flux. For Momo, who defies classification, survival is dependent upon his ability to run and hide. Sebbar depicts Momo’s flights as those of a hunted animal. The detectives on his trail become the hunters and Momo the prey. They take his belongings in order to dissect, analyze, and ultimately classify them. On both a figurative and literal level they attempt to grasp Momo and consequently see this taxonomy as the single most important method of doing so. For the policemen working on Momo’s case, it is this classification that will help them define Momo and his criminal activities. Interestingly enough, the novelist points out that Momo’s crimes include speaking strange, foreign languages, behaving differently than the detectives expect, and ultimately not conforming to societal norms.

Sebbar said once in an interview: “If I speak of exile, I also speak of cultural crossings; it’s at the points of meeting or splintering that I live, that I write, so how can I state a simple identity?” Momo follows in her footsteps because he too lives and writes at multiple points of splintering and is therefore incapable of stating a simple identity for himself. These two figures, the author and her character, give voice to the experiences of ethnic minorities in contemporary France. Thanks to them, we, as readers, come to question the notion of identity as a fixed category.