Six of Beyala's novels deal explicitly with the cultural and psychological effects of migration from sub-Saharan Africa to France. Although, as we saw in the previous chapter, Beyala's early novels limit most of the geographical space of the narrative to the African continent, Paris is, in fact, a centripetal force throughout her oeuvre. For a number of the Africa-based protagonists, France is presented as a promised land. For example, in an attempt to escape the horror of their own existence, girlchild-woman Tanga organizes ‘trips’ to Paris for her friends:

In fact, Tanga's ‘trips’ to Paris take the form of stealing French foodstuffs from a supermarket and then burying them in a cardboard box. She explains: ‘Il y a un moyen d'aller à Paris sans prendre l'avion: c'est d'enfermer ses symboles dans une tombe’ (TTT, p. 29) [There's a way of going to Paris without taking a plane: you lock up its symbols in a tomb (YNT, p. 86)]. Since economic deprivation makes geographical migration impossible, Tanga makes imaginary journeys in her head, sealing the souvenirs in the ground as a record of her trip.