Voicing the Experience of Adolescents in Francophone Narratives of Family Alcoholism

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In an interdisciplinary approach blending literary analysis, critical medical humanities, sociology (with a focus on the emerging convergence between addiction and adolescent studies) and gender-studies, this project expands discussion on patient-centred medicine and the role of narratives to give voice to experiences of the neglected population of adolescents experiencing alcoholism, both personally and within their family unit. Through analyzing the experience of adolescents in France and francophone Canada as expressed textually and visually through a varied corpus of autofiction, fiction, autobiography and bandes dessinées, this project sheds light on this silenced voice of the lived experience of alcoholism.This project analyses the experience of adolescents in France and francophone Canada who live in households where alcoholism is experienced as a social and medical illness. It draws on perspectives offered in literature in French to engage with the following questions:1.How does literature give voice to the taboo experience of adolescents who live in households where their parents/carers/guardians suffer from alcoholism, or where the adolescent themselves experiences alcohol addiction? How does the language used in these texts borrow from or challenge cultural, medical and/or public health discourses of alcoholism?2.Given different socio-cultural attitudes and responses to alcoholism, what differences and similarities are presented between representations of family alcoholism in French and Franco-Ontarian narratives? 3.In light of the sociological links between alcoholism and masculinity, how does gender influence expression of the lived experience of the adolescent affected by alcoholism?4.How is care represented in francophone narratives in which an adolescent is an addict or part of a household where alcohol addiction is experienced? How does institutional care interact with the dynamics of family care? Research Context-While alcohol consumption in the western world has fallen since the 1960s, alcohol-related deaths have risen sharply. A 2018 World Health Organisation report noted that France remains 6th out of the 34 OECD countries for alcohol consumption; indeed, there are over 2.5 times the numbers of deaths attributable to alcohol than to cancer in France. In Ontario, studies have shown that from 2003 to 2016, emergency department visits for alcohol consumption increased 4.4 times more than overall visits (Myran et al, 2019). Recent evidence suggests that alcohol abuse has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 lockdowns. Journalistic investigations and media discussions have, in the last year, sought to break the taboo on alcoholism in France, notoriously a private affair, including the particular experience of women. To date, though, the particular experiences of adolescents suffering from alcoholism, or living with alcoholic parents/guardians, have been missing from these discussions. My project analyses, for the first time, a rich multigeneric corpus (of fiction, autofiction and bandes dessinées) published in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century which privilege the perspective of adolescents living with alcoholism, either personally or as part of a family unit: Germain's Poison (1985), Levac's Petite crapaude! (1999), Vilain's La Dernière Année (1999), Fournier's Il a jamais tué personne, mon papa (1999), Kramer's Une famille (2018), Valambois' Mal de mère (2015), and Louis' Mon père ce poivrot (2019). The focus on France and francophone Canada will add to anglophone perspectives like Bunday's 1990 and Lacy's 2015 studies into depictions of parental drinking in young adult literature as well as Jolly's 2007 paper on understanding adolescent voice as guide for best practice in nursing.