Books: “A Woman’s Battles and Transformations” by Edouard Louis

Edouard Louis (nee Eddy Belleguel), author of “A Woman’s Battles and Transformations”,  was born in a tiny village in Northern France 35 years ago. Fun fact: his father named him Eddy after Edward G. Robinson, but candidly he was the last person one would associate with someone playing a gangster. On the contrary, Eddy’s effeminate behavior made him the object of ridicule from his classmates, the people in his village, and his own impoverished family.

Fortunately Eddy escaped his humble beginnings, and was admitted to two of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in France, the École Normale Supérieure and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. In 2013, he officially changed his name to Édouard Louis, and went on to write a number of books and plays that made him the toast of tout Paris, and soon after, the world. His works have been translated into 30 languages.

Louis’ play “Who Killed My Father” was performed at BAM recently. Its subject caused a stir as the playwright blamed the French elites, including the Macron Administration, for their bungling inability to help his father after he had a debilitating accident. In “Woman’s Battles”, the subject of discussion here, Louis deals with his mother, Monique.

As a young woman, Monique dreamt of becoming a chef, but life had other ideas. She got pregnant at an early age and married a man who physically and emotionally abused her. Abandoning that marriage, she then married again, had three more children including Louis, and was at the mercy of an alcoholic husband for the next 20 years. This book is about what happened next.

It’s easy to dismiss Monique’s story as nothing out of the ordinary. But what makes it compelling are the barriers—cultural, geographic, and economic—that made it nearly impossible for her and her famous son to succeed, and that they did so anyway.  Salut!