Name: The Barefoot Woman
ISBN: 9781939810045

Scholastique Mukasonga

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A moving, unforgettable tribute to a Tutsi woman who did everything to protect her children from the Rwandan genocide, by the daughter who refuses to let her family's story be forgotten. The story of the author's mother, a fierce, loving woman who for years protected her family from the violence encroaching upon them in pre-genocide Rwanda. Recording her memories of their life together in spare, wrenching prose, Mukasonga preserves her mother's voice in a haunting work of art.

The Barefoot Woman

Marion

But there were other stories. Stories that weren't ours, stories we didn't tell around the fire. Stories that were like the toxic drugs concocted by poisoners, stories heavy with hatred, heavy with death. The stories told by the white people, the Bazungu. The Bazungu had unleashed all the insatiable monsters of nightmares on the Tutsis. They held up the distorting mirrors of their untruths, and in the name of their science and their religion, we were made to see ourselves in the malevolent double their fantasies had given birth to.

I got this book on recommendation after reading our lady of the Nile. It’s listed as an autobiography but it is so much more. The book is centred around Scholastique mother Stephania having been displaced from Rwanda by the growing tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi. The book covers how they try to fit and live in this new environment by trying to maintain their customs and traditions amidst ethnic conflict, the effects of colonialism on their way of life, exile and displacement. It is very well written and great tribute to her mother and all Tutsi women. A heartwarming book though difficult because of how the story ends for most of her family.

Liz Prinz

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE A moving, unforgettable tribute to a Tutsi woman who did everything to protect her children from the Rwandan genocide, by the daughter who refuses to let her family's story be forgotten. The story of the author's mother, a fierce, loving woman who for years protected her family from the violence encroaching upon them in pre-genocide Rwanda. Recording her memories of their life together in spare, wrenching prose, Mukasonga preserves her mother's voice in a haunting work of art.