Mother of the Grass

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.

AUTHOR

Jovette Marchessault

Born in 1938 in Montréal, Québec, Jovette Marchessault is a novelist, a playwright, and a sculptor. Self-taught, her poignant work is marked by the harsh realities of her working-class adolescence. As a visual artist, Jovette has had over thirty solo exhibitions of her work in Québec, Toronto, New York, and Brussels. She is the winner of the Prix France-Québec, the Grand Prix Littéraire Journal de Montréal, and the Grand Prix Littéraire 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.

AUTHOR

Yvonne M. Klein

Yvonne M. Klein is a retired college English professor and a professional translator and editor who reads an awful lot of crime fiction. She has translated all three volumes of Jovette Marchessault’s autobiographical trilogy, Like a Child of the Earth, Mother of the Grass and White Pebbles in the Dark Forests.