ABSTRACT
In this short epilogue, I will wrap up the book by bringing back some of the women and girls we have seen pass as fictional characters in the various chapters. A retrospective question occurred to me while analysing the novels and films that were research materials for this book: what would women and girls like Katelijne, Esti, Gina, Rivkah, Kenza, Mantoa, Celine, Myriam and Nour say to each other, should they meet? Of course, we are talking about fictional characters here. If these women and girls were not fictional but historical flesh-and-bone individuals, their coming together would be highly unlikely. But precisely because they are fictional characters, bringing them together is possible, as an act of creative imagination. Many of the pieces of arts and culture present in this book are fictional responses to true-life political, cultural, religious and environmental structures and realities. By drawing on research materials analysed in this book, building from them, a beginning can be made with a new story, with new conversations. Writing these conversations is, in turn, my fictional response to the fictional characters present in this book. It is in that sense, as the novelist Miriam Toews (2018) puts it, ‘an act of female imagination.’
