Presented in Partnership with Archipelago Books

Scholastique Mukasonga

Sunday, May 16
2:00 pm

Award-winning Rwandan author Scholastique Mukasonga welcomes us virtually into her home in Paris to answer your questions, share her collection of autobiographical stories, and discuss the challenges and creative opportunities of writing memoir in exile.

Her gut-wrenching stories are honest, yet restrained, and move us through the simple joys of her early life to the horrific atrocities of displacement, genocide, and loneliness. What better way to learn more about them and her than the intimate setting of your own home?

Featured novels include Igufu and A Barefoot Woman, translated from French by Jordan Stump. Scholastique is joined by Johns Hopkins professor of world literatures, Jeanne-Marie Jackson.

Later this month, also in Paris, Scholastique accepts the honor of being the first African woman to be awarded with the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom, an international human rights prize for women’s freedom, awarded since 2008 to individuals or groups fighting for gender equality and opposing breaches of human rights. Upon receiving the news, she responded “It’s a pleasant surprise that arrives just as I’m in the process of writing my most feminist novel.” 

Language: French
Format: Artist live from France with English interpretation; viewed virtually