Both Calixthe Beyala's Le petit prince de Belleville, published in France in 1992, and Cynthia Shearer's The Celestial Jukebox , published in the United States in 2005, explore similar questions regarding the place of immigrants in increasingly multicultural societies. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's concept of "smoothness" and "striation" illuminates the settings of these two texts, helping demonstrate that the Parisian neighborhood of Belleville presents a striated space dominated by State constraints, from which the residents yearn to break free, and the fictional town of Madagascar, Mississippi consists of relatively smooth space that allows for local improvisation and engenders insecurity. The stories of Loukoum and Boubacar illustrate how these two characters negotiate their respective spaces, with Loukoum creating a position thoroughly between striated majority French culture and the smoothness of his diasporic sphere and Boubacar functioning as a rhizomatic nomad, embarking on an autonomous journey of discovery.