Book of Emma

"Confined to a psychiatric hospital following the murder of her young daughter, Emma Bratte refuses to speak any language but her mother tongue. Dr. MacLeod had brought in an interpreter, Flore, to help him evaluate Emma's fitness to stand trial." ""Both crazy and too lucid," an articulate and knowledgeable Emma relates her long battle against despair, through striking images of her lonely but determined and creative struggle to win the love of a mother misled by a racist society and then through tales of the suffering and resistance of some of her female forebears. These narratives, which are both epic and dramatic, and their contrasting reception by the officious psychiatrist and the sensitive Flore, produce rich layers of experience and meaning in this concisely narrated work." "Flore recognizes Emma's faithfulness to her ancestor's struggle and wisdom, both in her desperate gesture to save her child from the cruel humiliations of prejudice and in her definitive act of rejoining her ancestors when she has effectively fulfilled her duty to pass on the memory, theirs and hers, to guide her successors, like Flore."--BOOK JACKET.Agnant, Marie-Célie is the author of 'Book of Emma ', published 2007 under ISBN 9781897178263 and ISBN 1897178263.