Amrouche, Fadhma Aïth Mansour (c.1882-1967). Algerian writer; she and her daughter Taos were the first Berber women writers. At 16, while working at a mission hospital near Michelet, she was baptized and married to Belkacem-ou-Amrouche, a young teacher attached to the mission, bearing him one daughter and seven sons. She spent most of her life in Tunis. In 1946 her son Jean persuaded her to write down her memories in French. These, with an epilogue written after her husband's death in 1959 and that of Jean in 1962, were published by Taos in 1968 as Histoire de ma vie. This unique work is a detailed account of a woman's personal history and a sociological document throwing light on existence in the remote villages of Kabylia at the turn of the century. Fadhma Amrouche was a singer, preserving traditional Kabyle songs learned originally from her own mother, and to these she added original poems, which Taos translated into French and included in her mother's autobiography.
[Dorothy Blair]
