The Barefoot Woman, by Scholastique Mukasonga

August is Women in Translation Month. I'm a week behind because I got too absorbed in the Broken Earth trilogy to not continue with it after I finished The Fifth Season on August 2. But I'm devoting the rest of August to reading books by women that have been translated into English. I started with The Barefoot Woman, by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated from the French by Jordan Stump. As well as being a book by a woman in translation, this is also the first book I've read from Rwanda so it counts toward my world books project too.

The Barefoot Woman is a beautiful book, a memoir of the author's childhood as a displaced Tutsi in Rwanda of the 1960s, and a tribute to her mother, Stefania, who was killed along with many family members in the genocide of 1994. The book isn't a continuous narrative; rather it's organized into chapters covering different aspects of refugee life. For instance, there's a beautiful chapter on sorghum, how it's grown and harvested, and all the ways it's used. There's a chapter on medicine, traditional and Western. In a chapter on a topic I don't recall, there's a delightful discussion of the introduction of underwear to the refugee community where Mukasonga grew up. 

In one sense, this book goes about describing traditional life in Rwanda, but it does this largely through absence and contrast. The refugees, who have been displaced to a desert region far from their lush, mountainous homeland, try to maintain their way of life without access to the resources they once had, and under constant threat from violent gangs. A cow-herding people, they were stripped of their livestock in the forced relocation and that absence – the missing milk – comes up again and again. Deprived of their traditional family compounds, they must adapt to the rough structures of the refugee camp. 

The surprising thing I found, as I read The Barefoot Woman, was how full of joy it was. The opening and closing address the tragedy that befell Mukasonga's mother – and so many others she knew – in the most wrenching terms. The devastation is there, lying in wait, throughout the book. You know the fates of the refugees, sometimes (heartbreakingly) specifically. And yet the memories – many of them at least – are happy ones. Stefania was clearly a force. Her determination to raise and protect her children and her way of life is incredible. Knowing the territory it covers, I was surprised how many times this book made me laugh. This was a great start to Women in Translation Month.