The Way of the Majority’s World: Language as a Bildung Lesson in Tomás Rivera’s … y no se lo tragó la tierra and Azouz Begag’s Le Gone du Chaâba

This article examines how the Bildungsroman has evolved to portray modernity in contemporary multicultural France and the United States through a comparative study of Tomás Rivera’s 1971 novel … y no se lo tragó la tierra and Le Gone du Chaâba (1986) by Azouz Begag. In these novels, the realization of domestic modes of expression as “illegitimate” in public spaces constitutes a distinct Bildung apprenticeship. Such a lesson on linguistic hierarchy is crucial for the protagonists’ entrance into the social world. However, the texts’ adoption of linguistic practices associated with migrant and postmigration communities, or in Rivera’s case, writing in the immigrant language, nuances the “language lesson” and reveals a counterhegemonic dimension of this subgenre of the Bildungsroman.