{"id":3712,"date":"2014-09-26T16:09:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T16:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scholastiquemukasonga.net\/home\/?p=3712"},"modified":"2014-09-26T16:09:06","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T16:09:06","slug":"barnes-noble-review-our-lady-of-the-nile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholastiquemukasonga.net\/fr\/barnes-noble-review-our-lady-of-the-nile\/","title":{"rendered":"Barnes & Noble Review : Our Lady of the Nile"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tVous pouvez lire sur le site de Barnes & Noble une critique par Christopher Byrd sur ‘Our Lady of the Nile<\/a>‘,
\nla traduction am\u00e9ricaine de ‘Notre-Dame du Nil’.
\n<\/p>\n

Visitez le site de Barnes & Noble Review pour lire la critique:
\nhttp:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/review\/our-lady-of-the-nile\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Barnes<\/a><\/p>\n

Twenty<\/strong> years ago, one of the most comprehensive bloodlettings in human history happened in the small Central African country of Rwanda. Beginning in April and continuing for some 100 days into July, a state-sponsored campaign of mass extermination was waged by the country\u2019s majority Hutu population against their Tutsi neighbors. It is estimated that between 800,000 and 1 million people were murdered. According to Survivor\u2019s Fund<\/a> (SURF), this averaged out to six men, women, and children killed every minute\u2014a rate that surpassed that of any Nazi concentration camp. Descriptions of the slaughter return frequently to the stupefying amount of physical labor involved. Whole communities\u2014kids included\u2014were mobilized to take part in the killings. On the radio, citizens were exhorted to use whatever makeshift weapons were available: knives, clubs, rope, machetes; little was distant or antiseptic about this butchery.<\/p>\n

One needn\u2019t lean on metaphysics or theology to grapple with the roots of such evil. As Scholastique Mukasonga shows in her expeditiously paced novel, Our Lady of the Nile<\/i><\/b>, <\/i>an ideology of resentment\u2014a hangover of Rwanda\u2019s colonialist history\u2014was lodged throughout the country well before 1994. Mukasonga sets her novel at a lyc\u00e9e for girls fifteen years prior to the genocide. By adapting the genre of the boarding school novel, she gives a universal texture to the resentment, envy, and opportunism that are a part of any student body\u2014but which in this context laid the runway for the physical and sexual violence perpetuated on the behalf of what the world would come to know as Hutu Power.<\/p>\n

Nestled high above a valley, in the Nyambinombe district, the school takes its name from a statue of the Virgin Mary located some two kilometers away from its campus where it overlooks a stream credited as the source of the Nile River. As the book\u2019s narrator, students, and teachers eagerly note, Our Lady of the Nile is tasked with grooming the country\u2019s young, female elite.\u00a0 Although the Mother Superior who heads the school pays lip service to the idea that the young women in her charge might use their education to secure prominent positions in the labor force, most of the students view such contentions as vapid idealism that does not speak to their predicament.<\/p>\n

\"\"The patriarchal expectations heaped on these girls make a description like this typical:\u00a0 \u201cHe viewed his daughter as a prime ornament for embassy dinners and receptions.\u201d A rhetorical crescendo occurs halfway through the story when one of the seniors rebukes the novel\u2019s de facto villain, Gloriosa\u2014a pompous, two-dimensional demagogue who openly threatens the small quota of admitted Tutsi students.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s enough,\u201d Gloriosa said\u2026 \u201cIt\u2019s time we remembered who we are and where we are. We are the lyc\u00e9e of Our Lady of the Nile, which trains Rwanda\u2019s female elite. We\u2019re the ones who\u2019ve been chosen to spearhead women\u2019s advancement. Let us be worthy of the trust placed in us by the majority people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGloriosa,\u201d said Imacul\u00e9e, \u201cdo you think it\u2019s already time for you to give us one of your politician-type speeches? Like we were at a rally? Women\u2019s advancement, well let\u2019s talk about that! The reason most of us are here is for our family\u2019s advancement, not for our own future but for that of the clan. We were already fine merchandise, since nearly all of us are daughters of rich and powerful people, daughters of parents who know how to trade us for the highest price, and a diploma will inflate our worth even more\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust listen to her,\u201d jeered Gloriosa, \u201cshe\u2019s talking like a white girl in the movies, or in those books the French teacher makes us read.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a stagy quality to some of this dialogue which \u2014 though obviously called out in the above \u2014 nonetheless crops up elsewhere. At times, the characters feel a bit artificial, as if they are informing on themselves:<\/p>\n

\u201dListen, Virginia, there\u2019s something I want to tell you. But don\u2019t breathe a word to anyone.\u201d
\n\u201cYou know we Tutsi never reveal our secrets, Veronica. We\u2019re taught to keep our mouths shut.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Though the dialogue skews too much to blatant declarations for my tastes, Mukasonga is a gifted storyteller with a sure sense of plot construction, and an aptitude for crafting piquant descriptions. Despite my quibbles, Our Lady of the Nile<\/i> swept me up with its artful bitterness. The novel has many targets. Like the skin-whitening creams pedaled to black women, or a teacher who buys into the sort of notorious argument advanced in Hegel\u2019s Lectures on the<\/i> Philosophy of History<\/i> (1837) that Africa has \u201cno historical part of the World\u201d\u2014which is recast in the novel\u2019s parlance as \u201cHistory meant Europe, and Geography, Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mukasonga rightly traces the origins of the Hutu-Tutsi conflict to European, or more precisely\u00a0 Belgian colonialists who pursued a divide and conquer strategy by elevating the Tutsis in society on account of their supposed racial superiority\u2014lighter skin tone, smaller noses, etc. These spurious racial generalizations took corrosive hold over the society despite the fact that Hutus and Tutsis had intermarried for generations, leaving their bloodlines indistinguishable. By the time the colonialists switched sides and backed the Hutus over the Tutsis near the end of their colonial tenure, a perilous sense of grievance was cultivated in a top-down fashion that a militant, political class used to consolidate power.<\/p>\n

If Our Lady of the Nile<\/i> is constrained by its tendentious characterizations of people\u2014each character a political point or archetype\u2014it is buoyed by its air of foreboding consequence that imparts urgency to almost every page.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vous pouvez lire sur le site de Barnes & Noble une critique par Christopher Byrd sur ‘Our Lady of the Nile‘, la traduction am\u00e9ricaine de ‘Notre-Dame du Nil’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[42,309,326,350,355,359],"yoast_head":"\nBarnes & Noble Review : Our Lady of the Nile - Scholastique Mukasonga - \u00e9crivaine rwandaise<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scholastiquemukasonga.net\/fr\/barnes-noble-review-our-lady-of-the-nile\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Barnes & Noble Review : Our Lady of the Nile - Scholastique Mukasonga - \u00e9crivaine rwandaise\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Vous pouvez lire sur le site de Barnes & Noble une critique par Christopher Byrd sur ‘Our Lady of the Nile‘, la traduction am\u00e9ricaine de ‘Notre-Dame du Nil’.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/scholastiquemukasonga.net\/fr\/barnes-noble-review-our-lady-of-the-nile\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Scholastique Mukasonga - 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