Marguerite-Fadhma Aït Mansour Amrouche ( in Tizi Hibel,

Algeria ) , image_map = Algeria (centered orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Algiers , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , religi ...

– July 9, 1967 in Saint-Brice-en-Coglès,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

) was a poet and folksinger.

Biography

She was born in 1882 in a

Kabylie Kabylia ('' Kabyle: Tamurt n Leqbayel'' or ''Iqbayliyen'', meaning "Land of Kabyles", '','' meaning "Land of the Tribes") is a cultural, natural and historical region in northern Algeria and the homeland of the Kabyle people. It is part of the ...

village, the illegitimate daughter of a widow. Facing harsh discrimination from within her surroundings, she left her village to study at a

secular Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unrelated or neutral in regards to religion. Anything that does not have an explicit reference to religion, either negativ ...

school. Later, when she was with the

Sister A sister is a woman or a girl who shares one or more parents with another individual; a female sibling. The male counterpart is a brother. Although the term typically refers to a familial relationship, it is sometimes used endearingly to refer to ...

s at Aït Manguellet hospital, she converted to

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. She met another Kabyle Catholic convert, Antoine-Belkacem Amrouche, whom she married in 1898 or 1899. They had eight children together, including writers Jean Amrouche and Taos Amrouche, but only two of the children would remain living by the time of her death. The family first moved to

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

, where Taos was born, and then France. During her lifetime, she made a considerable impact on the works of Jean and Taos. The folk songs she sang to her family were compiled and translated to French by Jean in 1939 as ''Chants berbères de Kabylie''. In 1967, Taos made a

music album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records col ...

in Kabyle bearing the same title as Jean's folk song collection. Her autobiography ''Histoire de ma vie'' was published posthumously in 1968. This book discusses mainly about the life she lived as a woman living in two different worlds: between the traditional Kabyle life and language and the colonial power France, its language, and particularly its predominant religion,

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesu ...

Biography

References

Further reading