The Barefoot Woman

by Scholastique Mukasonga, Jordan Stump (Translator)

It was while we were weeding the sorghum field that Mama taught me most of her memories of the Rwanda that used to be. Alas! I've forgotten so many of the secrets Stefania told me, the secrets a mother tells only her daughter.'


From the author of the critically acclaimed novel Our Lady of the Nile, a haunting, delicately wrought work of non-fiction, memorialising a lost childhood, community and way of life.


When Scholastique Mukasonga's family are killed in the genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus in Rwanda, she is unable to fulfil her mother Stefania's wish to shroud her body with pagne. So instead, she now weaves her mother's shroud with words, drawing on inherited traditions of storytelling to offer a devastating, unforgettable tribute.


In beautiful, lucid prose, Mukasonga lays before us the fierce courage and strength of her mother as she fought for her children's safety, her family's exile to the Burundi border and her community's efforts to maintain ritual and tradition. Vivid, evocative and deeply moving, this is a remarkable work of art and act of love.

Genres: Nonfiction, Africa, Memoir, Rwanda, Biography, History, Biography Memoir

153 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Born in Rwanda in 1956, Scholastique Mukasonga experienced from childhood the violence and humiliation of the ethnic conflicts that shook her country. In 1960, her family was displaced into the under-developed Nyamata. In 1973, she was forced to leave the school of social assistance in Butare and flee to Burundi. She settled in France in 1992. The genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda 2 years later. Mukasonga learned that 27 of her family members had been massacred. Twelve years later, Gallimard published her autobiographical account Inyenzi ou les Cafards, which marked Mukasonga's entry into literature. Her first novel, Notre-Dame du Nil, won the Ahamadou Kourouma prize and the Renaudot prize in 2012.

(from http://www.citylights.com/info/?fa=ev...)

Reviews

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerfully, strong and loving tribute to an amazing mother. A telling of the effects of colonization, displacement and exile.

"Maybe the Hutu authorities put in charge of the newly-independent Rwanda by the Belgiandps and the Church were hoping the Tutsis of Nyamata would gradually be wiped out by sleeping sickness and famine. In any case, the region they chose to send them to, the Bugesera, seemed inhospitable enough to make those internal exiles survival more than unlikely."

Driven from their home, her mother, tried to make a home where they now found themselves. Trying to keep her children alive, she found places and ways for them to hide. Hid food on escape paths, and had practice drills. She refused to let their culture die in this new, inhospitable place, and this book is full of examples of their daily lives, their practices, what they meant and how they were achieved. Sitting ducks for any violence visited on them, they tried to keep family together, intact. Stephana, her mother was an amazing women, strong and formidable. Strongly believed in education and due to that Mukasonga was in another country when the genocide occurred, where most including her family were murdered.

A wonderful book, wonderful because of the tender, loving way she portrays her mother. Difficult too, because one knows the ending if they know anything about the genocide in Rwanda.

ARC from Edelweiss.

[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read many books that recount in detail the barbarism and tragedy of the Rwandan genocide but none as personal and powerful as this one. I found myself becoming very emotional as Ms Mukasonga told the story of her mother's mission to keep her children safe from harm. This is a moving and heart-wrenching memoir that is not only about terror, fear and persistent anxiety about what may be coming around the corner, but it's also about survival, determination and love.

Instead of focusing on the horrors of the 1994 genocide which in effect was an attempt to exterminate every Tutsi in the country in the same way the Nazi's sought to kill all Jews, The Barefoot Woman is about the years leading up to the genocide and Mukasonga's daily experiences with those preceding decades. This is one of the most inspirational stories I've had the pleasure to read in recent years, it illustrates the unshakeable commitment to keeping her family together and to living despite adversity and the brutality and hardship of ethnic conflict. It is not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel it's important for these special voices to be heard.

Many thanks to Archipelago for an ARC.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature
Longlisted for the 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction

A mother’s dead body is not to be seen. You’ll have to cover me, my daughters, that’s your job and no one else’s. Otherwise it will follow you, it will chase you…it will haunt you until it’s your turn to die, when you too will need someone to cover your body.
...
I never did cover my mother's body with her pagne. No one was there to cover her. Maybe the murderers lingered over the corpse their machetes had dismembered.
...
Mama, I wasn’t there to cover your body, and all I have left is words — words in a language you didn’t understand — to do as you asked. And I’m all alone with my feeble words, and on the pages of my notebook, over and over, my sentences weave a shroud for your missing body.

The memoir The Barefoot Woman has been translated by Jordan Stump (also translator of Marie NDiaye) from Scholastique Mukasonga's French-language original La femme aux pieds nus, and published by Archipelago Books, a not-for-profit publisher devoted to publishing excellent translations of classic and contemporary world literature. ... Artistic exchange between cultures is a crucial aspect of global understanding: literature can act as a catalyst to dissolve stereotypes and to reveal a common humanity between people of different nationalities, cultures, and backgrounds.

Mukasonga was born in Rwanda in 1956, but in 1973 was force to flee the ethnic violence in the country to Burundi, later settling in France in 1992. In April to July 1994, the Rwandan genocide directed by the Hutu-led government led to the deaths of almost one million of the minority Tutsi population (an estimated 70% perished) including 27 members of Mukasonga's family, one of which was her mother, Stefania.

Cockroaches, by the same author-translator pair (original title Inyenzi ou les cafards), was a memoir of Mukasonga and her family's life in Rwanda and the ongoing oppression and violence against her people over three decades. The Barefoot Woman is a sequel of sorts, focused specifically around her mother, Stefania.

The story begins in the late 1950s when the Rwandan Revolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan...) 'saw the country transition from a Belgian colony with a Tutsi monarchy to an independent Hutu-dominated republic' (per Wikipedia). The Tutsi population, including Scholastique Mukasonga's family, were internally exiled to the Nyamata region by the now ruling Hutu administration.

The Tutisis of Nyamata weren’t slow to realise that the tenuous survival they seemed to have been granted was only a temporary reprieve.   The soldiers of the Gako camp, built between the villages and the nearby border with Burundi, were there to remind them that they were no longer exactly human beings but inyenzi, cockroaches, insects it was only right to persecute and eventually exterminate.  

Stefania's mission becomes to protect her family:

My mother had only one thought in her head, one single project day in and day out, one sole reason to go on surviving: saving her children. For that she tried every possible tactic, devised every conceivable stratagem. We needed some way to flee, we needed someplace to hide. The best thing, obviously, was to take cover in the dense bramble thickets that bordered our field. But for that we’d need time. Mama was forever on guard, constantly listening for noises. Ever since the day when they burned our house in Magi, when she first heard that dull roar of hatred, like a monstrous beehive’s hum racing toward us, I think she’d developed a sixth sense, the sense of an animal forever on the lookout for predators. She could make out the faintest, most faraway sound of boots on the road. “Listen,” she would say, “they’re back.” We listened intently. We heard only the familiar sounds of the neighbors, the usual rustles of the savannah. “They’re back,” my mother said again. “Quick, run and hide.” Often she only had time to give us a sign. We scrambled under the bushes, and a moment later, peering out from our hiding place, we saw the patrol at the end of the road, and we trembled as we wondered if they’d break into our house, ravage and steal our meager belongings, our few baskets of sorghum or beans, the few ears of corn we’d been foolish enough to put by.

Each day of survival unharmed represents a victory - but the threat is ever present.

Day after day she won out over the implacable destiny we’d been condemned to because we were Tutsis.  Again today, her children were still alive by her side.  She’d snatched them away from death’s clutches.  She looked at the three of us, Julienne, Jeanne, Scholastique.  This evening we were alive.  There might never be another evening.   

But I run the risk of giving a misleading impression of this novel. Cockroaches is where Scholastique Mukasonga focuses on the violence, and indeed at times she deliberately draws back in this book, saying she has already written of this elsewhere. This is a more tender novel focusing on a mother's life and love - and indeed on the mothers of the community generally:

Stefania is determined not just to preserve her family's lives, but also the traditional ways of life alongside the 'modern' methods promoted by the formal colonial authorities and their Catholic religion (both more favoured by her husband). She rejects the square corrugated iron house in which they are settled, and builds her own traditional dwelling. In a nice translation feature, from the original and preserved by Stump, the author uses the kinyarwanda word 'inzu' for these traditional dwellings, refusing to use the literal equivalent French terms as phrases such as hut or shack don't do these wonderful dwellings justice, but then reluctantly uses 'hut' for the much diminished version that Stefania is able to construct under the constraints of exile.

But Stefania is also open to positive aspects of western culture - hair-dye and underwear for example - praying both to the Virgin Mary and the traditional intercessor Ryangombe - on the grounds that it is best to cultivate two crops. Even the author's name is a combination of the two influences - Scholastique her Baptism name and Mukasonga her real name ... names whose meaning, always open to interpretation, seemed to sketch out future lives.

Much of the - it has to be said slightly disjointed - narration tells of the traditional way of life - particularly for girls, a life planned according to tradition from birth through to puberty, marriage, and motherhood:

the beneficent Mothers, the benevolent Mothers, the ones who fed, protected, counseled and consoled, the guardians of the family and the community, the ones the killers slaughtered as if to wipe out the very sources of life.

Overall: a moving and compassionate work. A non-fictional memoir but written with a novelist's flair for language and sensitively translated. 3.5 stars - rounded down to 3 for my personal preference more for the novel form, but recommended.

Excerpts:
https://tinhouse.com/the-barefoot-wom...
https://lithub.com/scholastique-mukas...

-------------------------------------------------------
This is the latest from the excellent Asymptote Book Club (https://www.asymptotejournal.com/book...), which I would highly recommend: the Asymptote Journal team select a piece of world literature each month from some of the leading independent presses in Canada, the US, and the UK.

Their review/introduction to this novel:
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog...

And the list of books to date:

13. The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga, tr. Jordan Stump, published by Archipelago Books
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
12. Hotel Tito, by Ivana Simić Bodrožić, tr. Ellen Elias-Bursać, published by Seven Stories Press
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
11. Oct-18 Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan tr. Brendan Freely and Yelda Türedi, published by Seven Stories
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
10. Sep-18 Moving Parts by Prabda Yoon, tr. Mui Poopoksakul , published by Tilted Axis Press
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
9. Aug-18 Revenge of the Translator by Brice Matthieussen, tr. Emma Ramadan, published by Deep Vellum
8. Jul-18 I Didn't Talk by Beatriz Bracher, tr. Adam Morris. published by New Directions
7. Jun-18 The Tidings of the Trees by Wolfgang Hilbig, tr. Isabel Fargo Cole, published by Two Lines Press
(my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
6. May-18 The Chilli Bean Paste Clan by Yan Ge, tr. Nicky Harmon, published by Balestier Press
5. Apr-18 Brother in Ice by Alicia Kopf, tr. Mara Faye Letham, published by And Other Stories
4. Mar-18 Trick by Dominico Starnone tr. Jhumpa Lahiri, published by Europa Editions
3. Feb-18 Love by Hanne Ørstavik, tr. Martin Aitken, published by Archipelago Books
2. Jan-18 Aranyak: Of the Forest by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, tr. Rimli Bhattacharya, published by Seagull Books
1. Dec-17 The Lime Tree by César Aira, tr. Chris Andrews, published by And Other Stories

[Paula Mota]

Mama, I wasn’t there to cover your body, and all I have left is words – words in a language you didn’t understand – to do as you asked. And I’m all alone with my feeble words, and on the pages of my notebook, over and over, my sentences weave a shroud for your missing body.

De todas as memórias sobre mães que já li, e já são algumas, esta é sem dúvida a mais devastadora, visto que Stefania, a magnética e incansável progenitora de Scholastique Mukasonga, surge não só como indivíduo, mas também como representante de toda a população Tutsi que foi deportada e dizimada pela maioria Hutu ao longo de décadas, até ao malogrado genocídio de 1994, onde desapareceu 70% da população dessa minoria.
Com um início chocante em que nos é logo dito que a mãe foi morta sem que o seu corpo tenha sido coberto de imediato pelas filhas, como ela lhes pediu expressamente, sabemos que nos espera uma leitura descoraçoante. Apesar do êxodo, do medo constante e da falta de meios de subsistência, a população escorraçada para Nyamata mantém as suas tradições e os seus rituais, e é deles que Mukasonga nos dá conta em capítulos sobre as habitações, os padrões de beleza…

So many worries our feet gave us! If, still according to the Rwandan standard of beauty, very straight legs were prized, with no ugly bulge at the calf, the feet were supposed to be small and delicate, with long slender toes. But how could you keep your feet comely when you had to walk barefoot on the dirt road, and till the soil from morning to evening, still barefoot?

…a alimentação, os cuidados de saúde, o progresso…

And indeed the nuns were counting on us to spread the use of underwear in our villages. We’d been named evangelists for underwear.

…a instrução e os casamentos combinados. É uma cultura em que a influência da crendice e da religião me exasperou um pouco e me fez sentir má pessoa por achar ridículas certas situações, até ter lido esta afirmação da própria autora: “O ruandês lida muito bem com o humor, mesmo que seja sobre si próprio. A ironia é característica da nossa cultura. Sempre achei que o leitor não precisava ser oprimido pelo horror, que ele pode também saborear nos meus livros o prazer inocente da leitura."
Há, por isso, momentos em que a inocência e a esperança desta menina me enterneceram:

That blue pleated skirt was like a dream. I’d seen one exactly like it on the Minister of Women’s Affairs when she came to visit Notre-Dame-de-Citeaux. She’d graduated from the School of Social Work, and one day I would study there myself, maybe I’d become a minister, so I needed a minister’s skirt!

No entanto, por cada passagem sobre a normalidade, a celebração da vida e o louvor às tradições, espreita a chocante realidade ao virar da página:

And so the cow was given as dowry to Jeanne’s family and she became Antoine’s wife. They had nine children, seven of them boys, to my mother’s delight. She was sure at least a few of them would survive to carry on the family name. She was wrong.

Mukasonga escreveu vários livros de ficção e não-ficção sobre o Ruanda, mas “The Barefoot Woman” são as memórias da infância e da adolescência na aldeia de Gitagata, nos anos 60, depois da saída dos belgas cujo rasto ainda é bem visível, pela religião, pelas escolas dos missionários e pela criação dos cartões que distinguiam os Hutus dos Tutsi, prática que deixou de existir após a reconciliação. É pena que Scolastique Mukasonga não esteja ainda traduzida em Portugal, porque é uma voz única que dá a conhecer uma cultura ímpar e transmite uma vivência sem igual na literatura ocidental, uma autora que era assistente social e nunca lhe ocorreu escrever até chacinarem 26 membros da sua família. Por isso diz: “Escrevo para salvaguardar a memória dos meus: é disso que tiro a coragem para sobreviver".

[leynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Scholastique Mukasonga is one of five writers I set out to read at least two books from in 2022. The year prior I fell in love with her writing style and what she had to say through her debut memoir Inyenzi ou les cafards. Born in 1956, in Rwanda, Mukasonga is one of the few members of her family to have survived the 1994 genocide on the Tutsi. Whilst her debut focuses on the events leading up to the genocide and its horrible massacres, her second book, La femme aux pieds nus, is a testimony to her mother.

As far back as civilisation goes, burial rites are sacred. There's nothing worse than a lack of burial place or body to bury. The body of the departed needs to receive the proper rites in order for their soul to rest peacefully. And for the peace of mind of those left behind as well. Mukasonga starts this book in the most chilling fashion, she recalls how her mother gathered her and her sisters one day and told them:

"Quand je mourrai, quand vous me verrez morte, il faudra recouvrir mon corps. Personne ne doit vor le corps d'une mère."

Faithfully Mukasonga and her sisters promise to cover their mother's body and bury her properly. Back then, they couldn't have anticipated that all of them, except Mukasonga, would be murdered in the 1994 genocide. Like thousand other Tutsi families, Mukasonga's parents and siblings left no bodies to be buried, or soil to be buried in.

As the sole survivor, Mukasonga not only feels guilt but also the burden of that unfulfilled promise. To amend for her "failure" to recover the body of her mother, Mukasonga turns to writing; in the written word, she finds solace:

"Maman, je n'étais pas là pour recouvrir ton corps et je n'ai plus que des mots – des mots d'une langue que tu ne comprenais pas – pour accomplir ce que tu avais demandé. Et je suis seule aves mes pauvres mots et mes phrases, sur le page du cahier, tissent et retissent le linceul de ton corps absent.

And thus, La femme aux pieds nus exists; it exists as a testimony to Stefania, Mukasonga's mother, her strength and her willingness to sacrifice everything for her children. But this memoir also has a much wider scope: it functions as a tribute to all Tutsi women and mothers, it is testimony to the fact that death couldn't exterminate and wipe them out.

In contrast to Mukasonga's first memoir, Inyenzi ou les cafards, which details the 1994 genocide in detail, her second book is much more full of life, focusing on the decades leading up to the genocide. Mukasonga recalls her childhood, the hut(s) they lived in, the importance of her mother holding the family together, the household chores and how they were divided amongst the children and the going-ons in the deported Tutsi community.

It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, of course, as the tension between Tutsi and Hutu has a long history in Rwanda. Born in 1956, Mukasonga was born into a torn society. Her family, alongside other Tutsi families, was uprooted and deported from their home village when she was young. They had to live in Nyamata, where they received segregated housing and education.

Elles savent qu’on les tuera. Qu’un jour ou l’aitre, proche ou lointain, on les tuera.

Despite these horrifying circumstances, Mukasonga recalls how the Tutsi community was eager to reinvent their lives in this prison without walls. Stefania, for example, mobilises her whole world to bring out the "inzu" without which a Rwandan woman could not feel truly at home. To make a home far way from home, to keep up traditions despite a lack of resources ("Écoute, mon fils, soupirait maman, les Blancs nous ont déjà fiat beaucoup de cadeaux et tu vois où nous en sommes! Alors laisse-moi, quand il le faut, aller chercher du feu comme on l’a toujours fait chez nous. C’est au moins cela qui nous reste."), to bring a community together in the face of horror – all these are lessons that young Mukasonga took from her mother and the Tutsi women of her community.

Ma mère n’avait qu’une idée en tête, le même projet pour chaque jour, qu’une seule raison de survivre: sauver les enfants.

As an adult, Mukasonga realises how much her mother has sacrificed to ensure the well being of her children, how her parents didn't think of saving themselves, only their kids: "Pourtant, cet exil, elle en l’envisageait jamais pour elle-même. Ni mon père ni ma mère eine songèrent jamais à s’exiler. Je crois quails avaient choisi de mourir au Rwanda. Ils s’y feraient tuer, ils s’y laisseraient assassiner. Mais les enfants, eux, devaient survivre."

In many chapters, Mukasonga described the day to day life that they lead. Unfortunately, I found many of these chapters to be rather boring. I'm just not that interested in the furniture of their hut, the medicine that they got, or the daily activities of her and her friends. Those chapters were pretty run of the mill. Not bad, but not all too interesting. The chapters that really hooked me in where the ones in which Mukasonga specifically talked about the situation of the Tutsi women, how the deportation messed with their life, in terms of their marriage prospects, pregnancy, and rape.

I found it interesting to see how the women banded together. How in the face of adversity, customs were thrown over board. For example, Mukasonga reports that among Tutsi, like in many societies up to this day, rape was an absolute taboo topic. It was not discussed. If a girl or woman was raped in Tutsi society, it was usually hushed up by their family in order to uphold the "family's honor". However, in Nyamata, many Tutsi women were raped by Hutu soldiers who were stationed there to ensure law and order. Mukasonga movingly describes the case of a young girl who fell victim to the rape of Hutu soldiers, and how the community decided to stand by her side. The girl wasn't shunned, she was supported by her peers.

Les Esprits des morts nous parlent-ils à travers nos rêves? Je voudrais tant le croire.

In the epilogue, Mukasonga recalls a reoccurring nightmare she's had for years, one in which she follows a group of children who are running away from her, only for Mukasonga to realise that they are carrying the bones of their people to an altar. The children ask her if she recognises them; the dream ends with Mukasonga desperately asking herself how on earth she is supposed to cover them all.

La femme aux pieds nus is an attempt to (re-)cover at least some of them, to give burial rites to some of the women who influenced and loved her the most. It seems to be another step in Mukasonga's own journey of trying to make sense what happened to her family. May this book bring her and all those too early departed some peace.

[Caterina · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book, what a beautiful, unexpected book. Review to come.

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful tribute to a mother, a strong, wise, resourceful, compassionate woman who dedicated her life to providing for and protecting her family in harsh and frightening conditions. The family lived as internally displaced persons in Rwanda, in constant fear of the brutality of Hutu soldiers, struggling for food, for social cohesion, for dignity. Although we are spared the story of the mother’s murder, we know that, although the daughter survived, the mother did not.

[Pedro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Estas memorias son narradas por Mukasonga (cuyo nombre cristiano es Scolastique), la mayor de las niñas que aún viven en casa, e incluye varios aspectos de la vida cotidiana, costumbres y creencias de su familia y vecinos. Son algunas de las familias de la etnia tutsi, que fueron arrancados de su vida ganadera en las montañas, y obligados a su exilio interno forzado en Nyamata, un territorio relativamente inhóspito, en el que viven bajo la amenaza permanente de las arbitrariedades de las tropas y bandas de la etnia hutu.

La narración está centrada en Stefania, la madre de Mukasonga, inagotable en su decisión de sobrellevar la adversidad y lograr la supervivencia y crecimiento de su familia. Presenta sus atributos para el cultivo y utilización de plantas medicinales, su papel como casamentera en la organización social, y su combinación ecléctica de creencias religiosas, que combinan elementos del cristianismo con la tradición tutsi.

Un libro, en el que no hay una trama o historia central, y que se centra en la narración de pequeñas historias de esta comunidad viviendo en una especie de limbo, basada en gran parte en la experiencia vivida por la autora. Y lo hace con una buena narración, muy interesante e ilustrativa.

Scholastique Mukasonga nació en Ruanda en 1956, y vivió una vida difícil debido a la persecución de los tusis, radicándose desde 1992 en Francia. Su novela más importante es Notre-Dame du Nil (2012), que no ha sido traducida al castellano.

Ruanda es un pequeño país en el centro-este de África, rodeado por los gigantes: R. D. Congo. Uganda y Tanzania; y al sur, su país espejo, Burundi (“la otra Ruanda”). Ambos países ya eran reinos organizados al momento de la llegada de las colonizadores, que se apoyaron en los tutsis, la etnia minoritaria dominante, en perjuicio de la mayoría de la etnia hutu. Después de un período de inestabilidad posterior a la independencia, a principios de la década del ’60, los hutus tomaron control del país e iniciaron una venganza y persecución de los tutsis; inicialmente una marginación, con similitudes a un apartheid, y fue creciendo gradualmente hasta concluir con un genocidio con un alto grado de crueldad, y cerca de un millón de víctimas en 1994. Transcurridos casi treinta años, Ruanda es actualmente es el país más seguro y pacífico del continente, aunque convive con esta profunda herida en su historia.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read both Our Lady of the Nile and Cockroaches also by Scholastique Mukasonga, I was pleased to receive the ARC for this loving remembrance of her mother, her family, and a lost way of life. While the other books dealt with the background and events of the genocide in Rwanda, this memoir provides a portrait of the author’s childhood, after the Tutsi population was moved beyond the river, away from the dominant Hutu.

Maybe the Hutu authorities put in charge of the newly
independent Rwanda by the Belgians and the Church were
hoping the Tutsis of Nyamata would gradually be wiped
out by sleeping sickness and famine. In any case, the region
they chose to send them to, the Bugesera, seemed
inhospitable enough to make those internal exiles’ survival
more than unlikely. And yet they survived, for the most part.
...And little by little the ... makeshift huts became villages....
But...soldiers of the Gako Camp, built between the villages
and the nearby border of Burundi, were there to remind them
that they were no longer exactly human beings but inyenzi,
cockroaches, insects it was only right to persecute and in the
end to exterminate. (loc44-52)

This is the background of the memoir and the author’s young life. Of course her memories are colored by all that she knows has happened since, the heavy weight of loss.

The leading light of her young life was her mother, a force of nature in her family who seems to have been so in the village also. While she prepared them for the possible future army attacks, she also continued with normal life, managing the fields and crops and seasonal traditions and her role as village matchmaker. She also told age-old folk tales to her children some of which Mukasonga passes on to us.

She valued education which is why Scholastique was not with her extended family when the end came. She was out of the country in college. This memoir is full of love, sadness, regret, and so much loss. The mention of her newly married brother and her mother’s wish for many healthy grandchildren is just one.

This is an important part of the writing about Rwanda. I recommend it, along with the works I have mentioned above, for a personal view of what happens to marginalized people when societal rules no longer control the majority. This is
also a good picture of what can happen at the end of colonial systems when the “overseeing” entities, here Belgium and the Catholic Church, appear to look away from what is happening.

A copy of this book was provided by Archipelago Books through NetGalley in return for an honest review

[Lauren]

"Nothing pleased her more than watching her children eat. She'd saved them from starvation, working for the Bageseras in exchange for a few sweet potatoes ... Day after day she won out over the implacable destiny we'd been condemned to because we were Tutsis. Again today, her children were still alive at her side."

From THE BAREFOOT WOMAN by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Jordan Stump, 2008/2018.

Part biography of Mukasonga's mother Stefania, and part ethnography of a people displaced. A childhood in Tutsi refugee camps of Uganda, forced from their Rwandan homeland after strife in the 1950s-60s, the post-colonial ethnic conflicts that lead to the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s.

Mukasonga's stories are full of observation and appreciation, describing the rituals and customs of the Tutsis, people who herd and prize their cattle, nearly as members of the family, and till their fields with care and attention. Other chapters focus on health and medicine, food and cooking, marriage and beauty customs, and related stories with her mother and other family members, including her own education and early adulthood.

[Alessandra Jarreta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A última frase do livro me deu deu um arrepio que começou no começou da coluna e dura até agora. Que história, que mulher! Por favor, leiam Scholastique!

[Pedro Pacifico Book.ster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sobrevivente da guerra civil que assolou a Ruanda no começo da década de 90, Mukasonga escreveu alguns livros para relatar as atrocidades e sofrimentos que vivenciou. Em “A mulher de pés descalços”, a autora faz uma homenagem à sua mãe, Stefania, uma das vítimas do massacre do povo Tutsi. No entanto, apesar de tratar da violência sofrida pela etnia minoritária do país (em comparação com os Hutus, que correspondiam a mais de 90% da população), Mukasonga se concentra em reconstruir a figura de sua mãe a partir de suas memórias de infância relacionadas com as tradições do seu povo. Para isso, a autora transita entre temas como a figura da mulher nas relações familiares dos ruandeses, até detalhes culturais como moradia, alimentação e casamento.

A maior parte da narrativa se passa em Nyamata, uma cidade no sudeste da Ruanda, para onde a sua e outras famílias Tutsis foram deportadas na década de 60. O leitor aprende sobre a história do país e de seu povo por meio de uma escrita sensível e impactante.
Ao longo do livro também é possível identificar os impactos que a colonização trouxe para a vida dos ruandeses. Embora seja nítida a imposição dos costumes pelos colonizadores, uma parte das tradições consegue sobreviver e se adaptar à nova ideia de civilização. De fato, ao mesmo tempo que Stefania acreditava e conhecia “as plantas de bom augúrio”, não deixava de ir às missas católicas todos os domingos.

Ao se propor a refazer a memória de sua mãe, Mukasonga na verdade conseguiu refazer a memória de todo um povo e de milhares de mães da Ruanda, vítimas de um massacre assustador e que deixou suas marcas permanentes na história.

“Mãezinha, eu não estava lá para cobrir o seu corpo, e tenho apenas palavras – palavras de uma língua que você não entendia – para realizar aquilo que você me pediu. E estou sozinha com minhas pobres palavras e com minhas frases, na página do caderno, tecendo e retecendo a mortalha do seu corpo ausente.”

Nota: 8,5/10

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[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me encantan las historias que me permiten conocer otras culturas, así que he disfrutado mucho leyendo en euskera Emakume Oinutsa (publicado en castellano como La mujer descalza) de la ruandesa Scholastique Mukasonga.

He leído a muy pocos autores africanos y nada sobre los tutsis y el genocidio de Ruanda de 1994 que sirve como contexto de esta historia. Y es que la historia es un homenaje de la autora a su madre, Stefania, asesinada en aquel terrible escenario. Una mujer descalza que hizo lo imposible (desde crear refugios a planes de huida) para mantener a sus hijos vivos.

La autora se remite a su infancia para hablarnos de su cultura, de sus tradiciones y de sus miedos. Me ha gustado mucho descubrir como era su vida, en que creían y dejaban de creer. Como el enviar a sus hijos al colegio obligó a su comunidad a abrirse a nuevas realidades. Y como las barbaridades cometidas por algunos blancos les hicieron desterrar viejas creencias y unirse para apoyarse.

Es una historia bonita, de descubrimiento, si como yo no sabéis nada. Pero también dura porque se tratan temas serios como las misiones y sus imposiciones o las violaciones de niñas y mujeres y sus consecuencias en una comunidad muy exigente con las mujeres.

Leedlo si tenéis oportunidad y sed testigos de esas reuniones de mujeres en los patios traseros.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Jordan Stump, is a loving tribute to Mukasonga’s mother, Stefania. Mukasonga delivers this tribute in the form of a memoir. She describes her family’s life after they were forcibly deported from their homes in Rwanda by the Hutus in a horrific episode of ethnic cleansing. Forced to relocate, they had to eke out a living as best they could. Terrorized by Hutu militias because of their Tutsi ethnicity, their lives were frequently interrupted by Hutus clamoring into their homes, stealing their possessions, destroying their crops, raping their women, and killing their sons and husbands.

Through it all, Mukasonga’s mother tries to hold the family together. Her unwavering focus is on saving her children. She is ever on the alert for the sound of approaching soldiers. She hides food in the bush for her children in case they ever need to make a hasty getaway to Burundi to avoid being massacred. She trains them to be ready at a moment’s notice to hide and even runs practice drills for them to make sure they know where to go.

Mukasonga describes her mother’s efforts to create a loving environment for her children. She praises her ability to make do with little. From her mother, she learns housekeeping skills, cooking, the rituals involved in growing sorghum, which traditional medicines heal specific ailments, various beauty treatments, the ceremonies around birth and marriage, and the role of storytelling in the preservation and transmission of culture. Above all, she honors her mother for her toughness, her resilience, and her unflagging devotion to her family.

The memoir opens with Mukasonga’s mother reminding her daughters to cover her body when she dies since no one must see a mother’s corpse. Mukasonga regrets she wasn’t there to cover her mother’s body when she was killed because her body was never discovered. She does the next best thing. She gives voice to her mother’s indomitable nature and celebrates the traditions she embraced in the hope her words will be the shroud which enable her mother’s spirit to rest.

Recommended.

My book reviews are also available at www.tamaraaghajaffar.com

[Beatriz Linares · Rating 5 out of 5]

Contudo, foi nelas, nelas próprias e nos filhos nascidos do estupro que essas mulheres encontraram uma fonte viva de coragem e a força para sobreviver e desafiar o projeto dos seus assassinos. A Ruanda de hoje é o país das Mães-coragem.

[Jola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scholastique Mukasonga’s “The Barefoot Woman” expands upon elements in her prior work “Cockroaches”, focusing on the character of her mother, Stefania. Writing and reading about the Rwandan Genocide is obviously not an easy task, but the author achieves the impossible: writing a book that is surprisingly easy to read. More than just a chronicle of home life, TBW is an encyclopedia of her mother’s knowledge, touching on subjects like sorghum harvesting, pharmacology, building a home, weddings, and storytelling - all of which are written with great intimacy. It could be called ethnography, but Mukasonga uses that word in an acid tone - she merges her anecdotes with memoir, and has created a hybrid work focusing on the intricate rituals of life in the face of impending death.

Scholastique Mukasonga is a brilliant writer, and in the reviews that I have read little attention is paid to the way that she writes, favoring the emotional content of her work. I think what makes her work so powerful is that even in exile, she excels in building a home in her writing. I kept noting how I found this book “comfortable” throughout reading it. Maybe by writing about her mother, this is how she portrays her love for her? I do not know. But I found this to be the most powerful aspect of this work.

Beauty and scatology go hand in hand in this novel, as exiles come into contact with European novelties. Stefania slips money into Mukasonga’s bag in hopes of acquiring hair dye, and proudly espouses messages of progress after her daughter introduces her to undergarments. But the most surprising revelation comes with the introduction of porcelain toilets: “the fashion of the new WCs introduced by Félicité quickly spread in Gitagana. Women talked their husbands into digging new trenches so they could install the same facilities as Marie-Thérèse. It was progress, amajyambere! How could they have known that many of them were digging their own graves?”

Unlike “Cockroaches”, this book is not driven by the tensions of exile but focused more on home life in unsettling times. TBW is by no means a lesser work, but it is something that should be read after Cockroaches - it fills out the edges rather than covering the center. Because of this, TBW is likely to appeal to a different readership, softer and less pointed but by no means less poignant. It does different things with similar material, and succeeds in its aims.

But for the reader expecting the same emotional impact of Cockroaches - look elsewhere. This is a redemptive book that seeks to reclaim what has been lost, much less about the act of loss itself. The concluding remarks of this book are swift. If you are new to Scholastique Mukasonga, I strongly recommend beginning with her first novel. This book is the fruit of that labor.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moving tribute by the author to her mother, killed in the Rwandan genocide, and a celebration of Rwandan culture. The memoir sometimes feels very (too?) nostalgic but it also felt like the author was trying to celebrate the joy and love of her upbringing and culture as a means to counter the memory of the cruel deaths of her family members. The memoir acts as a way to enshrine the memory of a people and culture which some had sought to destroy. I also really enjoyed how the memoir gives the reader a peak in women's world in Rwandan society in the 1950-60s.

[Amelia Rowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful memoir. Reminiscent of 'Things Fall Apart' in terms of detailing aspects of traditional Rwandan society, but with the ever-looming tragedy of the genocide.

[Gregory Duke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not nearly as powerful as Cockroaches. Mukasonga chooses her mother as this memoir's focal point, and, in some moments, that works wonderfully and evocatively, but, in many others, it becomes less about her mother and more so the everyday practices and rituals of Tutsi life in exile. This causes this book to feel more like a supplemental epilogue to Cockroaches for those readers who seek more anthropological information about Tutsi life rather than the narrative memoir style of Mukasonga's debut. While I recognize that this way of life has been eradicated, and, as such, it's recording is a necessary means of memorializing a lost culture, it had tendency to bore instead of excite.

Still some beautiful prose though (from the prologue):
"Mama, I wasn’t there to cover your body, and all I have left is words – words in a language you didn’t understand – to do as you asked. And I’m all alone with my feeble words, and on the pages of my notebook, over and over, my sentences weave a shroud for your missing body."

[Ingri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Denne boka startet jeg på, og så ble den liggende urørt en god stund. Det er helt ærlig fordi jeg syns den var litt kjedelig, og jeg ville heller lese andre bøker. Og det føles fælt å innrømme?? Historien er vond og sår, har mye fokus på morsrollen, og den er betydningsfull. Høres ut som noe jeg kan like. Fragmenter av minner og refleksjoner uten et tydelig plot ble for vanskelig å følge denne gangen. Vet ikke om tre stjerner er riktig. Jeg vil fremdeles lese Cockroaches!

[Blaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvelous memoir of growing up Tutsi in Hutu dominated Rwanda, before the 1994 massacre. A memorial to her mother and to the lived experience of females as internal, displaced refugees in Rwanda, trying to preserve their traditional lives after being deprived of their home lands and cattle.

Beautifully and sensitively written.

[enricocioni · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Barefoot Woman is a strange, deceptively subversive book. The title, the prologue, the first two or three chapters—at first, all these things led me to believe that the book would mostly be a tribute to Mukasonga’s mother, a portrait in words, an expression of grief and remembrance dedicated to a woman with an extraordinary story. To some extent, it is all these things. But it’s also, surprisingly, an ethnography.

An ethnography is a detailed description of the ways and beliefs of a people—in this case, displaced Tutsi refugees in Nyamata, Rwanda, in the 1960s. (Historical side-note: the Tutsi people had been favoured by the Belgian colonial administration between about 1916 and 1959; around 1960, Rwanda gained independence and the Hutu people seized control of the government; anti-Tutsi violence perpetrated by the Hutu—including massacres—spread across the country, and many Tutsi were also forced to move from their homes to barren territories.) About half the book’s chapters actually bear the same titles you’d find in an ethnography’s index or table of contents: “Sorghum,” “Medicine,” “Bread,” “Beauty and Marriage,” and “Women’s Affairs.” We learn about the correct structuring of an inzu house, the importance of maintaining the fire inside it, the shame of letting others see the inside of your mouth, the ritual by which a baby is welcome into a community, the significance of certain hairstyles. Sometimes we learn these things through long descriptive passages, and sometimes through anecdotes vignettes, which don’t end up connecting to each other to make an overarching plot like you’d expect in a more conventional memoir. Though we catch the occasional glimpse of the community’s ways of life before they were forcibly deported to Nyamata, and Mukasonga often sadly hints at the fact that most of the people she mentions were eventually murdered as part of the country’s 1994 genocide, for the most part what we get is a picture of a community frozen in a specific place and time. With regards to Mukasonga’s mother, the reader finds out almost nothing about her life prior to the family’s deportation to Nyamata, or after the 1960s. Almost all we see of her is who she was within her community in that very specific place and time Mukasonga chose to describe.

It’s been a while since I studied anthropology at Uni, but if I remember correctly (and if I don’t, please let me know in the comments) it was common practice, in early ethnographies (which, needless to say, were largely written by white Europeans and Americans), to create the illusion that the people they described lived in a weird frozen timeline of their own, pure and untouched by history or other cultures. This weird frozen timeline was known as “the ethnographic present.” This was (and, actually, to some extent still is) one of the subtler weapons of Western imperialism, as it implied that other cultures are superior to the ones described in the ethnographies because they can adapt to the changing times, and it erased the impact of colonialism and related phenomena on a people’s way of life. Mukasonga does something similar in The Barefoot Woman—providing a relatively static account of a single people’s lifeways—but the effect ends up being subversive: she has turned a weapon of colonialism into a tool of commemoration, to pay tribute instead of to justify erasure, to create a sort of richly detailed three-dimensional photograph of a time when her family and people managed to still preserve some of their traditions in the face of oppression.

For the rest of my review, head over to my blog, Strange Bookfellows: https://strangebookfellowsblog.wordpr...

[Gabriela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eu: pandemia... vou ler coisas leves
Também eu: lendo sobre o genocídio em Ruanda.

Que livro incrível. A homenagem que a autora faz à sua mãe com o texto consegue extrapolar uma mulher, descrevendo toda uma geração. Doído, pesado mas também poético, ele é riquíssimo de cultura local e te transporta.

[Gabriela Ramos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scholastique, ruandesa "desterrada" como ela mesma denomina sua família, narra uma vida de exilada sobre o ponto de vista feminino, com o foco na sua visão materna: Stefania. Uma visão intimista e simbólica do genocídio ruandes, como nunca antes vi.

Aqui ela honra a memória feminina numa terra inóspita, que apesar dos perigos eminentes, fome e mortes a comunidade resiste seus símbolos, crenças e partilhas.

Nos encantamos com o apreço a terra, o cultivo, a valorização do mínimo, o olhar mágico de Scholastique sobre a mãe. Uma cultura que não desvaloriza a natureza, ao contrário, animaliza o ser humano. Vemos uma vida de simbiose, gratidão e harmonia com uma terra, que mesmo seca e sem frutos, consegue se revigorar com a força do trabalho braçal das mulheres e suas enchadas.

Conseguimos observar o patriarcalismo com uma nova roupagem nessa sociedade. Hábitos de casamento, um cultivo por um padrão de beleza peculiar e a vitória vista por mais filhos homens gerados.

Vêmos a presença dos missionários brancos com sua missão civilizatória branca, classificando indivíduos pela sua fé. Também há a classificação orgânica belga entres tutsis e hutus, origem de toda guerra civil futura, conseguimos entender bem o conexto socio-político.

Apesar desse íntimo, ela consegue dar um contexto histórico super digerível sobre o genocídio.
Scholastique busca a reparação com seus livros, mas alcança mais que isso, um livro de uma qualidade literária fora do comum, vocabulário e descrições muito ricas, sua sensibilidade, honra do povo e amor pelas matriarcas de sua terra são inspiradores e necessários. Essa história precisa ser ouvida por todos nós.

[Luciana · Rating 4 out of 5]

A presente obra de Mukasonga apresenta aos leitores uma nova perspectiva do massacre/genocídio ocorrido em Ruanda contra os povos tutsi, de modo que a autora faz de sua obra um diário vivo de sua infância no período que foram, de certo modo, exilados e perseguidos pelas milicias hutus, convivendo com a incerteza e carência de amparo social durante um período opaco de direito.

Nos colocando a par do dia a dia da comunidade, somos apresentados tanto a cultura daquele povo, bem como de suas tradições, da configuração de espaço, do que é pertencer a um território e como a exclusão e perseguição de um povo pode culminar em uma perda de identidade. Assim, de forma leve, estamos a par, em especial, da figura da mulher perante aquela sociedade, como se adequaram e buscaram conviver com o medo cotidiano, fazendo da obra rica e bastante fluida, sendo, de tal maneira, indispensável sua recomendação.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholastique Mukasonga writes so well that anything from her is sure to be a joy to read, in spite of the harrowing subject matter, and this slight memoir is no exception. Whereas her earlier two books, Our Lady of the Nile, and in particular Cockroaches, which is a searing indictment of the Rwandan genocide and quite unforgettable in its depictions of the violence meted out by the Hutus, tackle the subject head on, this time she has decided on a gentler, more elegiac tone. The violence is there, but kept more in the background. Now she has chosen to concentrate on her childhood and in particular her mother, whose one aim in life was to try to keep her children safe. It’s a loving and tender memoir, all the more powerful in that we know what dangers are looming on the horizon. It’s a fairly unstructured book, with much about the traditions and culture of the Tutsis, and it gives a vivid portrayal of what day to day life was like. Taken all in all, Mukasonga’s books are important and powerful works of witness and this one certainly adds to that legacy.

[Davvybrookbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a powerful remembrance of the author’s mother, a community, her youth in the 1960s. For Scholatique Mukasonga’s second work after Cockroaches, The Barefoot Woman offers insight into Tutsi cultural practices such as agriculture, marriage practice, and village design. As well, it marks a period of time before the known genocide by the Hutu ruling ethnicity, by perhaps 30 years. This must somehow indicate how the end of Belgian colonial occupation in the late 1960s fed ethnic hostilities. This is not clear within the text but is certainly an implication of terms about white people, missionaries and Belgian policies.

More must be read by Mukasonga, and her stories weave a cultural narrative as powerful as Chinua Achebe. And autobiography as the critical approach to an unbelievable reality.

[Superstine · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5

[Nordpirat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastiskt fin och kärleksfull skildring av vardagslivet i byn. Även om exiltillvaron är svår och riskfylld är den full av gemenskap och medmänslighet bland grannarna och familjemedlemmarna.