Je me souviens: Memories of an Expatriate Angolophone Montrealaise Quebecoise Exiled in Canada - Softcover

"[This] intimate monologue is funny, feisty, heartfelt."

"Je me souviens is a valuable text for anyone interested in contemporary Quebec history or the ongoing struggle to establish and define Quebecois identity ... "
-- Canadian Literature

In this powerful dramatic monologue, Lorena Gale remembers, by reconstructing for the audience, her childhood and coming of age as an African-Canadian in Montreal.

Her autobiographical protagonist is unabashedly one of those spoil-sport ethniques” who, for political factions led by the likes of Parizeau, undermined and destroyed the separatist pur-laine” vision of a new Quebec nation, sparkling and clean in its coat of only three coloursthe seamless snow-white of the landscape, the royal blue of the sky, and the golden yellow of the sun (king), all allusions to the symbology of the imperialists who founded this new nation,” this new France.”

In a dream-sequence / folksong which is played in ironic fragments between the voices adopted by the actress, Gale lyricizes the long, parallel process of rediscovering her self, first as a dark speck on the horizon where pure white meets pure blue, then finally as a full-grown adult, whose race, gender and class are far more definitive of her person than the vapid dreams of the neo-nationalists of the late 20th century.