What happens when one-fifth of a country’s population participates in a genocide? In the case of the Rwandan Civil War, the horror was so widespread that those left staggering in its aftermath were struck dumb, either vowing to forget the past or silent victims of post-traumatic amnesia. In Jacaranda, Gaël…
Last month, I picked up a gently used copy of short stories by Guy de Maupassant. I’d put off reading his work for too long and was happy when a friend from my book club chose the classic tale, Boule de Suif, for this quarter’s read. The short collection, titled…
For years, my primary source for looking up French words and expressions has been the online language forum WordReference.com. For any French word I don’t recognize, the platform provides synonyms, the English translation, sample sentences, and a range of expressions that utilize the word. If that doesn’t suffice, the same…
If you’ve ever taken a course in French literature, you probably had to read at least one work by a Francophone author with African origins. France’s colonial empire once controlled a significant portion of Africa, and while nearly all of these areas gained independence by 1960, French is widely spoken…
Like Marcel Proust’s madeleine dipped in lime blossom tea, a chance visit to the Pat Conroy Literary Center this week elicited a flood of memories from my childhood. Unlike Conroy, I grew up in the north. My parents were diehard liberals, free thinkers that decried America’s involvement in Vietnam and…
So much of today’s media focuses on issues that divide us. I thought this week I’d take a break from conflict and breeze through a topic that most of us, regardless of political leanings, can embrace: the fables of the French poet, Jean de La Fontaine. Between 1668 and 1694,…
I know Madame Bovary is hailed as one of the greatest works of French literature, but after plugging away at the first 200 pages of the book this summer, I had to give up. I can’t say the writing is bad—far from it. The story simply failed to pique my…
I never imagined I’d begin a blog post with the words “this week I had a hysterectomy” but such is the case. I’ve decided that I might as well let it be known that I have more in common with my two female cats than I did one week ago.…
