This is a memoir written in French by the Rwandan Tutsi writer Scholastique Mukasonga. Ostensibly it cover the time period of the early war before and during the massacres, and discusses her childhood, her mother’s presence on her life, and growing up in the shadow of genocide.
But beyond these specifics, this is a memoir of place and a kind of life. We spend a lot of time discussing the elements of everyday life like bread, and church, and houses. So while this book does discuss genocide, it’s not entirely concerned with this. So this is a strange kind of connection then. How do you narrate the ordinary with the looming presence of the very extraordinary always kind of there. I think what happens here is that when we are thinking of the ordinary, or at least when I am thinking of the ordinary, I am comparing the events of my life to events of Scholastique Mukasonga’s and this doesn’t work. On the one hand it’s privileged to call my life ordinary, but also it’s not. It’s more privileged to call her life extraordinary, because for her, it has to be ordinary or else it wouldn’t be ordinary. So to be more accurate, this life is different from my life. But what really stands out from all this is that this memoir feels like it wouldn’t cover the parts of life that I would have thought it would. Instead, it does mostly focus on the events of everyday life. This in part captures a sense of what was lost, what was denied, and in this way acts as witness not just to the violent acts themselves, but the specific ramifications of those violent acts.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Barefoot-Woman-Scholastique-Mukasonga/dp/1939810043/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+barefoot+woman&qid=1573569323&sr=8-1)