Algerian writer, was the illegitimate daughter of an impoverished, illiterate Berber peasant woman. A Muslim by birth, she converted to Christianity, produced one of the first, if not the first, autobiographies written by an Algerian woman, became a naturalized French citizen, and raised two children who became well-known French literati: Marguerite Taos Amrouche (known as Taos Amrouche), a poet, singer, and novelist, and Jean Amrouche, a writer and poet. But the circumstances of her early life were unpromising at best.
Amrouche was born in a remote village in the rugged mountains of Kabylia in northeastern Algeria in 1882 When the villagers discovered that Fadhma s mother Aïni was pregnant out of wedlock they attempted to kill her as an adulteress as custom cruelly dictated But plucky Aïni placed herself under the protection of the local French colonial magistrate and laid charges against fellow villagers including male family members thus ...
