Andrée Blouin

Andrée Madeleine Blouin (December 16, 1921 – April 9, 1986) was a political activist, human rights advocate, and writer from the Central African Republic.[1][2][3]

Andrée Blouin
BornDecember 16, 1921
Central African Republic
DiedApril 9, 1986
NationalityCentral African Republic
Occupationpolitical activist, human rights advocate, and writer

Early life

The daughter of Josephine Wouassimba, a Banziri woman, and Pierre Gerbillat, a French businessman and adventurer, Andrée Blouin was born in Bessou, a village in Oubangui-Chari (later the Central African Republic). At the time of Andrée's birth, her mother was 14 years old, and her father was 41.[1] At three years of age Andrée was taken from her mother by her father and his new wife Henriette Poussart, and placed in the Sisters of St. Joseph of Cluny orphanage for girls of mixed race, where she endured neglect and abuse.[4][1][5] At her 15, the nuns tried to pressure her in an arranged marriage.[5] She spent 14 years in the orphanage before she and two other girls ran away in 1938.[4][1]

Personal life

After escaping from the orphanage, Andrée moved with her mother to Brazzaville began work as a seamstress. While riding on a riverboat in the Congo River, Andrée met a Belgian aristocrat named Roger Serruys.[1] Soon afterwards, she moved in with Serruys to Banningville, where he was appointed the new director of the Belgian Kasai Company.[1] Frustrated by his insistence that their relationship be kept a secret, Andrée returned home to Brazzavile three months pregnant.[1] She gave birth to her daughter Rita on her 19th birthday, December 16, 1940.[1]

Andrée met a local Frenchman named Charles Greutz, and they welcomed a son René on her 21st birthday, December 16, 1942.[1] At two years of age, René fell ill with malaria but was refused treatment in local hospitals because of his African ancestry and before long he died from complications related to the disease.[1][5] Tramautized by the experience, Andrée decided that Rita should not grow up in colonial Africa, and after legally marrying Greutz, she and her daughter relocated to France in 1946.[1] Greutz stayed behind in Bangui to work, while Andrée and Rita resided with the Greutz family in the town of Gebviller in Alsace.[1]

Andrée returned to Bangui in 1948, and learned that her husband Charles was having an affair. Not long afterwards she met French engineer André Blouin, one of her husband's contemporaries, who was on assignment for the French Bureau of Mines.[1] The two fell in love, and after Andrée's divorce from Greutz was finalized, she and André Blouin were married in 1952.[5] The couple went on to have two children, a son named Patrick and a daughter named Sylviane.[1]

Activism

Andrée Blouin credits the untimely death of her young son as her primary motivation for becoming a political activist later in life.[4] Her son's death from malaria could have been prevented with the right medication; however, because of his African ancestry, he was denied the proper medical treatment.[4] More specifically, since Andreé Blouin was classified as “metisse,” or “mixed” because of her African mother and European father, this label was put on her son as well, making it impossible for him to get the malaria treatment.[6] Her son was ¾ white and both she and her son were French citizens, but they were both treated unjustly because of their blackness.[7] This devastating and racist experience sparked her immediate interest in activism. Blouin launched a campaign against the Quinine Law that prohibited individuals of African ancestry in French Equatorial Africa from receiving appropriate medication to treat malaria.[4]

In the 1950s, she left her new husband and her daughter to travel to Guinea to support the country's independence movement.[4] Blouin joined Sékou Touré, the leader of the Guinean Democratic Party, in the fight for independence from France.[2] After being expelled from Guinea by French President Charles de Gaulle for her political activism, she returned to Central Africa to support the struggle for independence from France. She organized and mobilized women for the Parti Solidaire Africain,[2][8] an organization from Belgian Congo whose goal was freeing Africa from colonial rule. She later became chief of protocol in Patrice Lumumba's government, formed during the aftermath of Congolese independence from France.[9] Blouin was expelled from the Congo in 1960 just before Lumumba was executed by political rivals.[2][5] In 1973, her husband divorced her and she then decided to settle in Paris.[5] In Europe, she continued her work as an advocate for gender and social equality, as well as for economic justice in various African countries.[4][10]

During her life, her activism rose concerns in the Western world: the Eisenhower administration and the Belgian authorities worried about her supposed Communist links and the New York Times called her an “advocate of extreme African nationalism.”[5] However, she described herself as a socialist who was committed to African nationalism.

End of life

At the end of her life, she was diagnosed with lymphoma and she was depressed. She died on April 9, 1986.[5]

Literary works

Blouin's autobiography, My Country, Africa: Autobiography of a Black Pasionaria, was published in English in 1983.[4][11]

Further reading
  • My Country, Africa. Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria, autobiography with Jean MacKellar (1983)
  • Bouwer Karen, "Andrée Blouin: A Sister among Brothers in Struggle", in Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: The Legacy of Patrice Lumumba, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 71–99.ISBN 0230316298.

See also

References
  1. Blouin, Andree; MacKellar, Jean (1983). My Country Africa: Autobiography of the Black Pasionaria. New York, NY: Praeger. ISBN 978-0-03-062759-0.
  2. "Andrée Blouin". Francophone African Women Writers. University of Western Australia.
  3. "Andrée Blouin". Retrieved 25 November 2018.
  4. Ormerod and Volet, Beverly and Jean-Marie (1 February 1996). "le cas des Africaines d'expression française". The French Review. 3 (3): 426–444. JSTOR 396492.
  5. Reid, Stuart A. (2020-02-14). "Overlooked No More: Andrée Blouin, Voice for Independence in Africa". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  6. Joseph-Gabriel, Annette K., Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship In the French Empire.
  7. Joseph-Gabriel, Annette K., Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship In the French Empire.
  8. Joseph-Gabriel, Annette. "Remembering the Congolese women who fought for independence". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  9. Bouwer, Karen (2010). Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: The Legacy of Patrice Lumumba. pp. 82–83. ISBN 978-0230316294.
  10. Sheldon, Kathleen (2005). Historical Dictionary of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa. pp. 34–35. ISBN 978-0810865471.
  11. "African literature". Reading Women Writers and Literatures. Retrieved 25 November 2018.
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