Tomboy - Nina Bouraoui

Tomboy - Nina Bouraoui - Hachette, TL, "a French mother. In Algerian father. I know the smells, sounds, colors. It is an asset. It is poverty. Do not choose is to be in wandering. My face Algeria. My French voice. I have the shadow of my light. " Between the Algerian father and mother of Brittany, the fruit of a love denied: a daughter's search for his place here, there. One nationality to another, from one identity to another, from one sex to another. Her name is Yasmina, is preferred as a boy, known as Nina, and Ahmed, and Brio, who lies, hides, which invents, shaping "a body made for light, sand and salt winds ". But in this disturbing play of identity, Nina covers the wound in her family, all the trauma of the war in Algeria. Tomboy, beyond an intimate story between Algiers and Rennes, is also a reminder of Algerian history, with scattered memories and painful: the War of Independence, the killing of women by men of the OAS, learning of the suffering, violence. It's still the experience of everyday racism as an inheritance, a certain France, unable "to truly love what is foreign," the experience of humiliation and hatred in which the narrator draws its force. After five novels, Nina Bouraoui sign is his first autobiographical work. A work harsh, uncompromising, governed by the violence of words of a young girl caught between two cultures, damaged two exiles. - Céline Darner