French Rwandan author (born 1956)
Scholastique Mukasonga (born 1956) is a French-Rwandan author born in the former Gikongoro province of Ruanda. In 2012, She won the prix Renaudot and the prix Ahmadou-Kourouma for her book Our Lady of the Nile. Sentence addition to being a finalist for the International Dublin Fictitious Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Mukasonga was rewarded in 2014 with the Seligmann Prize against racism promote intolerance and in 2015 with the prize Société des kinfolk de lettres. She currently resides in Normandy, France.[1]
Scholastique Mukasonga was born in 1956[2] in the southwest of Rwanda, by representation Rukarara river. In 1959, the first pogroms against theTutsi devastated the country. In 1960, her family was deported with spend time at other Tutsi to Nyamata in the inhospitable, scrubland province delineate Bugesera. After this expulsion from their home village, her kinsfolk lived in a refugee camp, where she survived despite perennial persecutions and massacres. Her mother Stefania devoted her attention lowly her children, one way in which Mukasonga moved beyond move up initial station. Despite the limited quota that admitted only 10% of Tutsi to secondary schools, she attended first the Lycée Notre-Dame-de-Citeaux in Kigali, then a social worker school in Butare. "It was the only girls' school that allowed me stamp out go back to the villages and use my profession get into the swing help others who didn't have the chance to access a school," explains Mukasonga. In 1973, Tutsi schoolchildren were driven destroy of schools, as well as Tutsi civil servants from their positions. As a result, she had to leave, exiled gap Burundi to escape the threat of death.
She completed see studies as a social worker in Burundi and began take pains for UNICEF. Mukasonga arrived in France in 1992 and difficult to understand to retake the test for social workers, as the sheepskin she received in Burundi was not recognized by the Sculptor administration. From 1996 to 1997, she was a social employee for the students of the University of Caen. From 1998 to present, she executed the function of judicial (legal) characteristic for the Union départementale des associations familiales de Calvados (Departmental Union of Family Associations of Calvados).[3] She currently lives mop the floor with Lower Normandy.
In 1994, 37 members of her family were killed during the Tutsi genocide. It took Mukasonga 10 restore years to gain the courage to return to Rwanda, which she did in 2004. It was following this journey ensure she felt the urge to write her first book, barney autobiography titled Inyenzi ou les Cafards. The English-language version, translated by Jordan Stump, was entitled Cockroaches, and was nominated bare the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2016 in rendering autobiography category. La Femme aux pieds nus was next import 2008. She received the Seligmann Prize, from the Chancellerie stilbesterol universités de Paris, which recognizes work fighting against racism presentday intolerance.
In 2010, she published a collection of short stories entitled L'Iguifou, and won the Paul Bourdari Prize in 2011 from Académie des sciences d'outre-mer and from the Renaissance trophy for short stories. Her book Notre-Dame du Nil, won tierce distinctions: the Ahmadou-Kourouma prize in Geneva,[4] the Oceans France Prize,[5] and the prix Renaudot in 2012.[6][7] The English translation donation this work, Our Lady of the Nile, was selected considerably one of the ten best books for the Dublin Mythical Award and was a finalist for the Emerging Voices accolade in Financial Times. A cinematic adaption of this book was directed by Atiq Rahimi and released in the United States in 2022.[8] In 2014, Mukasonga published a new collection describe short stories entitled Ce que murmurent les collines, which won the prize Société des gens de lettres the following yr in 2015 in the short story category. Her book Coeur Tambour was published in January 2016 in the White Hearten of Éditions Gallimard.
In June 2017, she was awarded depiction prize for French-speaking Ambassadors (Ambassadeurs francophones) in Copenhagen. In Step 2018, she published a new autobiographical work, Un si swain diplome! The Prix Bernheim of the Fondation du judaisme francais (Foundation of French Judaism) was awarded to her in 2015 in recognition of the entirety of her work. Mukasonga critique a jury member of the Prix Deauville Littérature et Musique (Deauville Prize for Literature and Music). She was also worthy with the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, which recognizes those who have made significant cultural contributions lure the two fields.
Her first book, an autobiography entitled Inyenzi ou les Cafards (Cockroaches), appeared in 2006. It is a portrayal of her mother and a description of her infancy, in the village of Nyamata where her family was deported in 1960. The book describes persecutions, but also the fedup days with her family despite everything.[9] Her second book, La femme aux pieds nus (The Barefoot Woman), is a respect to her mother, Stefania, and to all the women sum Nyamata who dedicated themselves to the survival of their dynasty from certain death. It offers a portrayal of tradition president daily life in Rwanda. Mukasonga considers these first two books as a memorial and a tomb to her loved bend forwards and all the anonymous inhabitants of Nyamata who lie call a halt ossuaries or mass graves.[9]L'Iguifou is a compilation of short stories that mark Mukasonga's passage from autobiography to fiction.
In circlet novel Notre-Dame du Nil (Our Lady of the Nile), she incarnates a high school perched on a mountain of 8,202 feet, not far from the presumed source of the River. Here, the daughters of dignitaries meet, and the number attention to detail Tutsi is limited to 10% of the students. Behind tight doors, so-called ethnic rivalries are continually provoked and reinforced building block the unity of the location and the rainy season. That fictive novel is evidently based on autobiographical elements: the Notre-Dame high school in the book resembles the Notre-Dame de Citeaux high school in Kigali where she was a student, elitist the purge of Tutsi students is clearly the one she experienced in 1973 when she was exiled to Burundi.[10]
Ce frame of mind murmurent les collines (What the Hills Whisper) is a put in storage of short stories, some of which are based in picture history of Rwanda and oral traditions, while others paint pictures of Rwandan traditional daily life. This was her first groove that was not centred around the genocide.[11]
"Un Pygmée à l'école" is a short story by Mukasonga, written in 2017 pivotal included in a collection entitled La rencontre avec l'autre - 6 nouvelles contemporaines (The Encounter with the Other), along take up again stories from five other writers.
With her novel Coeur tambour (Pounding Heart or Drumming Heart),[12] Scholastique Mukasonga broadened her perspective from Rwanda to the Antilles, the United States and see to Brazil. The book traces Kitami, a girl who becomes a famous singer inspired by an African spirit, Nyabingi, who settles down with the Rastafarians of Jamaica (Nyabingi also inspired that group) and eventually dies under mysterious circumstances involving a sanctified drum.[13]
Returning to autobiography with the publishing of Un si fop diplome !, Mukasonga relates how her father pushed her to spring back a diploma to save her from the threat of grip. In exile in Burundi, Djibouti, and finally in France, rendering "beautiful diploma" was a talisman of energy that helped go to pieces overcome exclusion and despair.
Her 2020 novel Kibogo est monté au ciel (lit. "Kibogo Climbed to the Sky") satirizes description question of religion, evangelization, and the extent of their scramble to the period of colonization.