Scholastique Mukasonga

Scholastique Mukasonga (born 1956) is a French-Rwandan author born in the former Gikongoro province of Rwanda.

Scholastique Mukasonga was born in 1956 in the southwest of Rwanda, by the Rukarara river.

In 1959, the first pogroms against the Tutsi shattered the country.

In 1960, her family was deported with many other Tutsi to Nyamata in the inhospitable, scrubland province of Bugesera.

After this expulsion from their home village, her family lived in a refugee camp, where she survived despite repeated persecutions and massacres.

Her mother Stefania devoted her attention to her children, one way in which Mukasonga moved beyond her 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 to go back to the villages and use my profession to help others who didn't have the chance to access a school," explains Mukasonga.

It is a portrayal of her mother and a description of her childhood, in the village of Nyamata where her family was deported in 1960.

The book describes persecutions, but also the happy days with her family despite everything.

Her second book, La femme aux pieds nus (The Barefoot Woman), is a homage to her mother, Stefania, and to all the women of Nyamata who dedicated themselves to the survival of their children from certain death.

It offers a portrayal of tradition and daily life in Rwanda.

Mukasonga considers these first two books as a memorial and a tomb to her loved ones and all the anonymous inhabitants of Nyamata who lie in ossuaries or mass graves.

L'Iguifou is a compilation of short stories that mark Mukasonga's passage from autobiography to fiction.

In her 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 Nile.

In 1973, Tutsi schoolchildren were driven out of schools, as well as Tutsi civil servants from their positions.

As a result, she had to leave, exiled to Burundi to escape the threat of death.

She completed her studies as a social worker in Burundi and began work for UNICEF.

Mukasonga arrived in France in 1992 and had to retake the test for social workers, as the diploma she received in Burundi was not recognized by the French administration.

In 1994, 37 members of her family were killed during the Tutsi genocide.

From 1996 to 1997, she was a social worker for the students of the University of Caen.

From 1998 to present, she executed the function of judicial (legal) representative for the Union départementale des associations familiales de Calvados (Departmental Union of Family Associations of Calvados).

She currently lives in Lower Normandy.

It took Mukasonga 10 more years to gain the courage to return to Rwanda, which she did in 2004.

Her first book, an autobiography entitled Inyenzi ou les Cafards (Cockroaches), appeared in 2006.

La Femme aux pieds nus was next in 2008.

She received the Seligmann Prize, from the Chancellerie des universités de Paris, which recognizes work fighting against racism and 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 prize for short stories.

In 2012, She won the prix Renaudot and the prix Ahmadou-Kourouma for her book Our Lady of the Nile. In addition to being a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Mukasonga was rewarded in 2014 with the Seligmann Prize against racism and intolerance and in 2015 with the prize Société des gens de lettres.

She currently resides in Normandy, France.

Her book Notre-Dame du Nil, won three distinctions: the Ahmadou-Kourouma prize in Geneva, the Oceans France Prize, and the prix Renaudot in 2012.

The English translation of this work, Our Lady of the Nile, was selected as one of the ten best books for the Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for the Emerging Voices prize in Financial Times.

A cinematic adaption of this book was directed by Atiq Rahimi and released in the United States in 2022.

In 2014, Mukasonga published a new collection of short stories entitled Ce que murmurent les collines, which won the prize Société des gens de lettres the following year in 2015 in the short story category.

It was following this journey that she felt the urge to write her first book, an autobiography titled Inyenzi ou les Cafards. The English-language version, translated by Jordan Stump, was entitled Cockroaches, and was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2016 in the autobiography category.

Her book Coeur Tambour was published in January 2016 in the White Collection of Éditions Gallimard.

In June 2017, she was awarded the prize for French-speaking Ambassadors (Ambassadeurs francophones) in Copenhagen.

In March 2018, she published a new autobiographical work, Un si beau 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 is a jury member of the Prix Deauville Littérature et Musique (Deauville Prize for Literature and Music).

She was also honoured with the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, which recognizes those who have made significant cultural contributions in the two fields.