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Overview
May Picqueray (1898–1983) missed none of the major events in history during her lifetime. In 1921, she sent a parcel bomb (it exploded without casualties) to the US ambassador in Paris, to protest against the infamous conviction and death sentence of Sacco and Vanzetti. In November 1922 she was commissioned by the CGTU Metal Federation at the Congress to attend the Red Trade Union International in Moscow, where she stood on a table and denounced the congress for feasting while the Russian workers starved. She then refused to shake hands with Leon Trotsky, to whom she had come to ask for the pardon of anarchist political prisoners. Years later, she was closely involved in the movements of May 1968 and the Fight for Larzac in 1975. Picqueray’s story is closely entangled with those of Sébastien Faure, Nestor Makhno, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berckman, Marius Jacob, and Buenaventura Durruti, among so many others. Her autobiography, My Eighty-one Years in Anarchy, is available here in English for the first time, translated by Paul Sharkey.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781849353236 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AK Press |
| Publication date: | 03/19/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
May Picqueray (1898–1983) was a French anarchist-feminist and antimilitarist activist.
Read an Excerpt
When I turned eleven, my mother “placed” me with a big butter dealer in Penhoët, the home of the shipyards that have produced such marvels as the France and many another vessel.
My job was to make home deliveries of butter. I would set out very early in the mornings with a basket over each arm and a sack tied around my waist. Those baskets were heavy. Then I would trudge for kilometers through the surrounding suburbs. I was well-fed and slept on a fold-down bed that I shared with two other older female employees.
I received a few tips, which I would put carefully aside to buy books with. My wages were paid directly to my parents. But come the evening, I was so worn out that I often nodded off over dinner. I had one Sunday afternoon a month off, “to go see my family.”
The schoolteacher who had befriended me, on finding out about my new circumstances, asked my mother if she could hire me to look after one of her children who was prone to epileptic seizures. He must have been five or six years old. The first time I ever saw him having a seizure, I remained frozen and had no idea what to do. It was an appalling sight: the poor boy would go rigid and shake back and forth, spittle running down his chin, his eyes rolling. It was my job to ensure that he did not crash into the furniture and to stretch him out on the floor with a cushion under his head. . . and to wait for the seizure to pass. Between seizures, we would play together. His mother made me do my homework at the same time as her eldest son who was the same age as me. I also did a few run-of-the-mill tasks, did the shopping, and tidied the house. I did not pine for my job in Penhoët.
The teacher’s home was very good for me. There were no more smacks, no more punishments, and I was happy.
They had long been planning to move to Canada where they had family. And they had set the wheels in motion. I was sad at the thought of being separated from them. They felt the same. They asked my parents for permission to take me with them.
My father was not keen on the idea, and it took some insistence on the part of my new masters and myself before he eventually agreed to let me go. My mother had agreed straight off. The idea of being rid of me was by no means displeasing to her.
When the day of departure came, I wept buckets as I said goodbye to my father, brothers, and sister, but once the train set off, I dried my tears. The countryside claimed all my attention; this was my very first big journey. There was our arrival in Le Havre, the embarkation, and the hubbub as we set sail. I had never set foot on a ship that size before. I saw little, however, of our venture into the high seas, as I had to watch over my little patient; the sea was quite calm, but he was seasick, and I was somewhat queasy myself.
Coming into port, I was startled to see the skyscrapers that were beginning to adorn the city. Canada had taken the United States as its example; it was Americanizing itself. The port, which looked out not at the sea but at the Saint Lawrence, was very busy. There were lots of boats coming and going.
Little by little, I got to know the city. We would have outings every Sunday. The summers were as hot as the winters were severe. Canadians gird themselves against intemperate weather; the doors and windows are of a double thickness and the homes well-heated.
Clothing and footwear were suited to the climate. There were some very old and beautiful houses that neighbored those ghastly concrete cubes proliferating around the world these days and making it ugly.
The Canadian landscape is one of the world’s most beautiful: pine, birch, and maple forests surrounded by enormous, glistening, limpid lakes. The little peasant girl in me was enthralled.
A brand-new life was starting for me. My time was divided between caring for my little patient, play, and study. And beautiful country walks. Discovering just how tough winter could be in that country. The snow and the ice. But the house was roomy and pleasant and well heated, with every comfort.
From time to time, we used to go to Trois Rivières, a picturesque little town where a nephew of my employers ran one of the many paper mills feeding the newspapers in the area.
Later, I visited Québec and its old château, the old town boasting a wealth of historical museums on the origins of Canada, her fight for independence, the arrival of the French fleeing from various provinces around France with their rough, sing-song patois arriving in the country to begin a new life.
Table of Contents
Preface
Foreword
① A Breton Girlhood
② I Start Out in Life
③ In Among the Anarchists
④ My Apprenticeship
⑤ Trip to the USSR
⑥ Back in Paris
⑦ My Saint-Tropez!
⑧ The Rout and the Occupation
⑨ My Comrades-in-struggle
⑩ The Fight Goes On
Appendices
Index