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My Life Story: The Autobiography of a Berber Woman, Edited by Dorothy Blair

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Fadhma Amrouche became a well known Berber poet and singer in Paris in the 1960's. She is the mother of the famous writer Marguerite Taos, and the Berber singer Jean Amrouche. Her detailed autobiography explains what it was like to grow up the illegitimate outcast of her village. A bright and strong-spirited girl, she was educated in French an age when few women were educated. The book describes her constant worry to provide for her eight children, a fascinating look at traditional family dynamics in a polygamous household, and a passionate love for Berber culture. It ends with a collection of some of her poetry.

This book presents the life history of an ordinary- -yet very unique Kabyle woman. Fadhma Amrouche was born in 1882/1883 in an Algerian village. Never legitimized by her father, she was subject to endless ridicule by the villagers, prompting her mother to send her away to convent school for her own protection. It was at another convent where her future husband first noticed her, and where they were married, necessitating her conversion to Christianity. In the pages of this book, Amrouche describes her schooling, her marriage, and her children. Her personal and family struggles are the clear focus, while world wars, epidemics and the war of independence flicker through the background. She never had it easy, and she never felt at home, not in France, Tunisia, her husband's house, or even her own village. But when you consider the time period she lived through, how different was her experience, in the end, from those of her compatriots? This book is well worth reading for the wealth of information it contains about conditions in late Nineteenth Century Kabylia as well as for its story of simple endurance.