” I’m tired. This sentence, women often pronounce it in the private, in the form of confidence. A collective of nine authors has given itself the mandate to explore this fatigue in the collection Maganeses, published by Québec Amérique.
When Fanie Demeule received the email invitation from author Vanessa Courville to write a short story on women’s fatigue, she didn’t hesitate for a moment. The project thrilled her.
“It’s not only an important topic, but an elephant in the room,” said Fanie Demeule on the phone. We hear cries of fatigue here and there, everywhere, all the more since the pandemic. Women repress themselves a lot, don’t dare talk about it too much, because that’s what is expected of them, she says. “No complaining, no whining, no disturbing. ”
In his short story, entitled How are you, Fanie Demeule (Dig up the bones, Natural light red) tackles an ailment that women talk even less about, although they are twice as likely as men to suffer from it: irritable bowel syndrome, “that no -diagnosis by default” when everyone else have been ruled out. Fanie Demeule does not hide it: she drew on her own experience – “the big experience that I do not talk about” – to create this punchy autofiction text.
Fanie Demeule remembers hearing a friend say that if he heard his girlfriend “shit” he would leave her. “It’s a bit in response to this injunction against women not to make too much noise, not to stink too much,” she said. Don’t be too much? I’ll give you too much, if that’s what you don’t want, launches the young author. And I’m going to talk about it in the way you wouldn’t want me to talk about it publicly, in the most frontal way possible. ”
No, the narrator of How are you does not go well. She suffers. The contents of his esophagus rise and the contents of his intestines explode. Anguish rises, hypochondria embarks. She tries hard not to show anything. I learned to speak without opening my mouth. “It was important for me that it be as precise as possible, with almost surgical precision, to really convey a whole range of emotions and sensations,” explains Fanie Demeule, who hopes her news will inspire readers and readers with a similar experience to undertake medical procedures.
” I’m tired ”
The idea of forming a collective of authors to write about women’s fatigue comes from the poet and teacher Vanessa Courville.
PHOTO JEAN-FRANÇOIS DUPUIS, PROVIDED BY VANESSA COURVILLE
The poet and teacher Vanessa Courville
In private, we often say the phrase “I’m tired”. The project of the collection is the desire to take this sentence out of private space to understand the structures that govern the daily fatigue of women.
Vanessa Courville, poet and teacher
“To start from the private sector to launch it in the collective. And to give diverse points of view on the issue, ”she adds.
Fatigue is explored on several facets. Mothers courage close to the shipwreck (Karine Rosso), the woman demolished by the abuse of childhood (Marie-Pier Lafontaine), the one torn between her art and her role of mother (Roxane Guérin), the young woman lost in a world entertainment (Gabrielle Giasson-Dulude), the forties torn by a late pregnancy (July Giguère).
“In this system, fatigue is generalized,” agrees Vanessa Courville, who cites the quest for performance and the illusion of entertainment. “But women’s fatigue seems to me to have an added perspective to all of this, especially for the body. A censored body, which does not have the right to overflow, which must be contained, always. ”
A little bit of light
Vanessa Courville places her own news in the world of boxing, a world she has frequented herself. The narrator recounts a date an old teenage friend gives her in Las Vegas. She dreams of seeing the boxing gymnasium, but will have to face, along the way, small and big injustices, small and big violence. “It’s these little everyday events that cause fatigue,” she says.
Despite their dark side, the news of the collection Maganeses, edited by Stéphane Dompierre, also let light shine, notes Vanessa Courville. “In literature, female characters are often on the side of dead bodies. We see it a lot in detective novels, she emphasizes. The idea is to counterbalance these voices. Yes, the women in the collection are lost, but they survive, and it is they who find the strength to continue. ”
Maganeses
Collective of authors under the direction of Vanessa Courville
Quebec America
176 pages