Eddy finds a photo of his mother as a young woman: her head tilted slightly, a faint smile, light bangs falling over green eyes — her whole body speaking of freedom. This woman, reaching toward the future and believing in the possibility of happiness, feels like a stranger, because Eddy has known a very different version of her all his life.
Mom, don’t you miss the girl in this photo?
Contemporary French writer Édouard Louis writes with unflinching honesty about his own life. His books speak of the material and emotional poverty he grew up with — poverty that has not disappeared, neither in France nor in Estonia. A Woman’s Battles and Transformations is both fierce and tender: an attempt to understand a mother who is fighting to break free from the humiliation of everyday life.