Subtitled “intimate and political diary” the author writes to her brothers and sisters about their alcoholic mother and abusive father. At the age of 14 she berates him but begins to see in him a great sadness. She reflects on how her parents used to live, in the forest, before the children had to go to school and he had to get a job; living in a town aggravated their differences, she a “woman of the woods” and he a “white man.” She speaks of growing up “mixed,” going to school, but grateful for learning her mother’s language at home. [Reprinted in La vie en rose, n. 17, May 1984, pp. 30-32]
