Readings | Women and destinies

Among the many publications of 2023, I was impressed by the quantity of portraits of women or by their speaking out, in all forms: interviews, essays, surveys, novels. In any case, I felt a common thread in my personal choices, of these readings which stimulated me the most.

Published at the beginning of the year, the interviews with Lise Bissonnette conducted by Pascale Ryan were a nice surprise. There we find not only the intellectual journey of the one who directed The duty and led the Grande Bibliothèque project, but also a bit of the history of Quebec since the Quiet Revolution, as well as a brilliant defense of the institutions through the very precise words of the lady who is very coherent. About the Grande Bibliothèque, which had its share of detractors at the beginning, she recalls this: “The last time that the government of Quebec created an institution was in 1968, with the network of the University of Quebec, an establishment which spread across Montreal and the region until the end of the 1970s. Nothing afterwards, for a quarter of a century. The following decades would belong to the private sector, the Quiet Revolution had run its course, we thought we had finished with all the catching up on services to citizens. »

A remarkable professional trajectory than that of Lise Bissonnette, born in 1945 in Abitibi, and who never stopped wanting to fill her gaps until very late embarking on a doctorate on the son of George Sand, despite several honorary doctorates.

I already admired Lise Bissonnette, these interviews only increase my respect for her, who has given a lot to Quebec.

Catherine Dorion’s journey within the democratic institution was rather short and eventful, but if there is one book that has been talked about this year, for better or for worse, it is hers, The hotheads – Punk hope diaries. It would be wrong to deprive ourselves of the idealistic outlook of the member for Québec solidaire who was disappointed by the adventure, because we must understand those who are driven by the desire to do politics differently. In any case, this book allows Catherine Dorion to escape the media clip, but you are free to agree or not with her positions, and I swear to you that the reading is not boring. I also really liked File a complaint, by Léa Clermont-Dion, who recounts in detail and with great candor the process she entered into by denouncing her attacker, while the #metoo movement was breaking out on the planet.

Here we have two young women who speak from the inside about their experience of politics and justice, and they do it with frankness.

Through a first novel, it is another experience from the inside that Emmanuelle Pierrot describes in The version that interests no one, undoubtedly one of the most acclaimed books of the fall. Pierrot reveals in lively and effective language a terrifying mechanism aimed at crushing women even within a marginal community where one would have expected more openness. I don’t know any readers who came away from reading this unscathed – the last few chapters almost gave me an anxiety attack. In a completely different style, and which is not devoid of humor despite a serious subject, The cookies of the apocalypse – or how I was canceled by the unspeakable, by Annie Du, is surprising; it’s a full-throttle charge in the form of disheveled fragments about the literary #metoo here, from an author who survived an attack by a publisher and… bedbugs.

Among the most beautiful portraits of women artists that we have read this year, there is certainly It could have been a movie, by Martine Delvaux, and Self-portrait of another, by Élise Turcotte. Delvaux tries to unravel the mystery of the painter Hollis Jeffcoat who lived in the shadow of two giants, Joan Mitchell and Riopelle, while Turcotte investigates the life of his aunt Denise Brosseau, who was the wife of Alejandro Jodorowsky and by Fernando Garcia Ponce. In both cases, it was aborted film projects that led to the writing of these books where we reflect on the place reserved for women in the artistic world.

The way we die cannot sum up the richness of an existence, but we want to unfold the thread of events when we are faced with someone at the end of their life, particularly when it is our mother. Seeing our mother grow old and die forces us to think about our own end. It was on the advice of the writer Carole David that I wanted to read Life, old age and death of a woman of the people, of the philosopher Didier Eribon, who gave me the motton all along.

Inspired by the decline and death of his own mother, Eribon analyzes our relationship to old age today, and I can tell you that he highlights several painful points.

I would be remiss if I didn’t include it here. My mother’s life, by my former colleague Nathalie Petrowski, which reads in one go like a good column that you don’t want to see end. For her too, the death of her mother, Minou Petrowski, inspired a reflection on their conflictual relationship. I admit to having read this book more to understand the daughter than the mother, whom I knew little, and I was not disappointed. I even laughed a lot, in addition to being moved by the fault lines of these two women.