Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda Lê: Imagining the Ideal Reader uncovers the primary textual relationship that Linda Lê (1963- ), the most prolific Francophone author of the Vietnamese diaspora, fosters with a literary precursor of Austrian descent: the feminist writer-in-exile, Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973). This study offers an overdue exploration of the notably European roots of Lês writerly formation. It traces an unexamined feminist import in her work to a sixteen-year inter- and intra-textual engagement with Bachmann and positions the latter as an imagined ideal reader of Lês oeuvre. Intertextual analyses of Bachmanns post-war novel, Malina, with Lês literary essays, early fiction, and trilogy, reveal that to overcome the challenges of writing in exile Lê adopts an alternative literary fore-bear of the European tradition.
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