| Summary: | The lyceum Our Lady of the Nile prepares the female elite from Ruanda to take over their roles at society. The discursive, ideological and cultural disputes reveal oppressive power relations, in which the Tutsi quota holder minority is constantly humiliated by their Hutus colleagues. In a country known by its violence and by its racial-ethnical differences, Scholastique Mukasonga intends to give voice to the memory so far obliterated by the genocidal practices. By unveiling the female students’ day-by-day, the author constructs a narrative that shows the private environment as a reflex of the excluding society. The testimonial content in the work discloses these female bodies in order to reveal another experience, different from the one contemplated in the official memory re-elaboration processes. A mosaic of voices, also polyphonic and plural, problematizes themes such as virginity, femininity, violence, rape, sexual abuse and power relations that are permeated as well by race and class issues. The objective of this study is to critically analyze the book Our Lady of the Nile (2017), from Scholastique Mukasonga, in order to evidence the female condition in the work. The investigational process shall be conducted under the gender and memory studies. For such, the following authors shall be used as theoretical background: Bernard Bruneteau (2006), Catherine Coquio (2004), Geoffrey Hartman (2000), Hélène Piralian (2000), Mahmood Mamdani (2001), Michelle Perrot (2003; 2017), Rebecca Solnit (2017).
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