Mother of the Grass

Description

Born at the end of the first volume in this autobiographical trilogy, the little Jovette sets off on her journey across the Land of Permanent Sacrifice in Mother of the Grass. Wrenched from her childhood paradise on the banks of the St. Lawrence, she is plunged into the child-battering hell of working-class Montreal, then later into the despairing din of the factories where she worked as a teenager. Her spirit continues to yearn for the light and peace of her childhood by the riverside and this book chronicles her extraordinary journey through the artists' cafes and gay bars, the bookstores, and the streets of Montreal in the 1950s and '60s, sustained always by the memory of her grandmother, toward a place by the river where she can write and be. Mother of the Grass is at once a brutal portrait of a world dedicated to violence against women and children and a remarkable visionary account of the growth of a major Quebec feminist artist's creative self.

Jovette Marchessault Born in Montreal, Quebec, Jovette Marchessault is a novelist, a playwright and a sculptor. She is the winner of the Prix France-Quebec, the Grand Prix Litteraire Journal de Montreal, the Grand Prix Litteraire de la ville de Sherbrooke and the Governor General's Award. Like a Child of the Earth (1988), The Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr (1992), Mother of the Grass (1989), Saga of the Wet Hens (1983) and White Pebbles in the Dark Forests (1990) are available in English translation from Talonbooks.

"Has enlarged the dimensions of the autobiographical novel by introducing elements of myth and visionary experience." -- Gloria Orenstein