La Mere de Ma

Rights available.The narrator of this book follows in the footsteps of her mother, from Haiti at the beginning of the twentieth century to the small flat of the rue Cardinet in Paris. Clara died at the age of one hundred last summer. The author did not know her well enough to call her 'Grand-mother.' She was already thirty when she first met her. Her own mother was twenty-one when she decided not to see Clara again, ever, and stood true to her decision even though mother and daughter lived a few metro stations away from each other. When eventually, thirty-five years on, they decided to meet again, it was too late. The narrator, however, discovers her mysterious and wild grand-mother, who was born in Haiti and came to France in 1920. In bringing back to life the woman who refused, to the end, to be labeled even as a mother, Vanessa Schneider appropriates a lineage and reconstructs her relation to her own mother. In this affecting and appeasing tale, she gives her back an identity that escaped her all her life.Vanessa Schneider is a political journalist, and worked thirteen years for Libération before joining the Capa Television agency. She has written a political essay and directed a documentary film. La mère de ma mère is her first novel.