Born at the end of the first volume in this autobiographical trilogy, the little Jovette sets off on her journey across the Land of Permanent Sacrifice in Mother of the Grass. Wrenched from her childhood paradise on the banks of the St. Lawrence, she is plunged into the child-battering hell of working-class Montreal, then later into the despairing din of the factories where she worked as a teenager. Her spirit continues to yearn for the light and peace of her childhood by the riverside and this book chronicles her extraordinary journey through the artists’ cafes and gay bars, the bookstores, and the streets of Montreal in the 1950s and ’60s, sustained always by the memory of her grandmother, toward a place by the river where she can write and be. Mother of the Grass is at once a brutal portrait of a world dedicated to violence against women and children and a remarkable visionary account of the growth of a major Quebec feminist artist’s creative self.

Jovette Marchessault
Born in Montreal, Quebec, Jovette Marchessault is a novelist, a playwright and a sculptor. She is the winner of the Prix France-Québec, the Grand Prix Littéraire Journal de Montréal, the Grand Prix Littéraire de la ville de Sherbrooke and the Governor General’s Award. Like a Child of the Earth (1988), The Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr (1992), Mother of the Grass (1989), Saga of the Wet Hens (1983) and White Pebbles in the Dark Forests (1990) are available in English translation from Talonbooks.

Linda Gaboriau
Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montreal. Her translations of plays by Quebec’s most prominent playwrights have been published and ­produced across Canada and abroad. In her work as a ­literary manager and dramaturge, she has directed ­numerous translation residencies and international exchange projects. She was the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Most recently she won the 2010 Governor General’s Award for Forests, her translation of the play by Wajdi Mouawad.

Jovette Marchessault's profile page

Yvonne Klein is a retired college English professor and a professional translator and editor who reads an awful lot of crime fiction. She has translated all three volumes of Jovette Marchessault’s autobiographical trilogy, Like a Child of the Earth, Mother of the Grass and White Pebbles in the Dark Forests.

Yvonne M. Klein's profile page

“Has enlarged the dimensions of the autobiographical novel by introducing elements of myth and visionary experience.”
—Gloria Orenstein