Andrée Blouin (1921-1986) helped birth several African countries into new eras of independence, free from French colonial rule.
Andrée Blouin (1921-1986) helped birth several African countries into new eras of independence, free from French colonial rule.
While motherhood can take many forms, to mother is to usher forth new generations through care, work and imagination. For the entire month of December, we’re celebrating mothers — including those who raised children who went on to lead the civil rights movement and school desegregation efforts, such as Alberta King and Louise Little, as well as mothers of movements like Lorena Borjas who started the Latinx trans movement. All of the women featured this month were dedicated to the survival of children in their work and to imagining better futures for the next generation.
History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.
Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.
Womanica was created by Liz Kaplan and Jenny Kaplan, executive produced by Jenny Kaplan, and produced by Liz Smith, Grace Lynch, Maddy Foley, Brittany Martinez, Edie Allard, Lindsey Kratochwill, Adesuwa Agbonile, Carmen Borca-Carrillo, Taylor Williamson, Ale Tejeda, Sara Schleede, Abbey Delk, and Alex Jhamb Burns. Special thanks to Shira Atkins.
Original theme music composed by Miles Moran.
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Before we get started, just a warning that this episode contains racial discrimination and violence.
Hi, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Anna Malakia Tubbs, the author of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of MLK, Malcom X and James Baldwin Shaped A Nation. My work focuses on motherhood, through the lens of feminism, intersectionality, and inclusivity. I’ll be your guest host for this month of Womanica.
This month, we’re talking about mothers: women who ushered forth new generations and new futures through their care, work, and imagination.
Today we’re talking about a woman who helped birth several African countries into new eras of independence, free from French colonial rule.
Let’s talk about Andrée Blouin.
Andrée was born on December 16, 1921, beneath an extraordinary moon, in a colony of French Equatorial Africa. Today, the area is part of the independent Central African Republic.
Andrée’s mother, Josephine Wouassimba, was the chief’s daughter, and just 14 years old when she became a mother. Andree’s father was a 41-year-old French businessman.
Andree’s father remarried not long after his daughter’s birth. And when Andree was three years old, he took her from her mother, and left her at an orphanage in the French Congo.
Locals called the orphanage The Convent, and it served a specific purpose: It was a place for mixed race girls, a dumping ground for white men trying to hide their interracial relationships. The girls were subjected to a combination of seclusion and neglect – protected for their whiteness, abused for their Blackness.
By the time Andrée was 15, life in the orphanage had become unbearable. She and two friends hatched a plan to escape – which they did, cutting their feet on the broken glass that capped the walls of The Convent.
Eventually, Andrée reunited with her mother, Josephine. This love would bring Andrée strength and comfort during a string of painful relationships. The first was with a man named Roger Serruys, with whom she had a daughter named Rita. Andrée lived in her mother’s home for a few months before her daughter was born. Josephine would check on Andrée every morning, putting her hands on her daughter’s belly. Andrée wrote, “Through her hands she gave the child strength and health and love.”
A month before Rita was born, Roger married someone else. Andree saw her own experience as a child being repeated.
But she later became aware of the flip side of the cycle, as her daughter was born on her birthday, December 16th: “My hopes for my child’s recognition were never to be realized, but my delivery in the Belgian Congo was to be prophetic of a later phase of my life. One day, there, I was to be deeply involved in the labor pangs and bloody birth of that country in its independence.”
Andrée later married a Frenchman named Charles Geutz. She had a son with him in 1942, named René. Like Andrée and Rita, he was also born on December 16th.
When René was two years old, he began to suffer bouts of malaria. At one point he was hospitalized, but he was denied medication because he was a quarter African. Desperate, Andree burst into the mayor’s office to demand help. He denied her the medicine. Andrée watched as her son’s health worsened, while a white child, the child of a neighbor, recovered thanks to the medicine. A month later, her son died.
“The death of my son politicized me as nothing else could,” she later wrote. She realized that colonialism was no longer just about her own painful fate, “but a system of evil whose tentacles reached into every phase of African life.”
In 1952, Andrée, now divorced, married a French engineer, also named André, and took his last name: Blouin. They had two children together and moved to French Guinea for his work.
The independence movement in French Guinea was gaining momentum under the leadership of Ahmed Sékou Touré.
Andrée was in a shop one day, when she looked up to see a poster of Ahmed Sékou Touré on the wall behind the shopkeeper. She stared at the poster of this man whose name she had heard so much since her arrival. She felt she recognized him. Andrée later wrote: “A few people are fortunate enough to know the precise moment when their life takes a powerful new course. I am one of those lucky few.”
Like the other French colonies on the continent, Guinea was preparing for a referendum in which people could vote to either remain a part of France or become independent. Andrée joined Touré and his party’s efforts to campaign for independence. She drove around the country organizing rallies and giving speeches, and became a trusted counselor to several party leaders. She did all this in spite of the sacrifice of leaving her family for extended periods of time, and the physical threats she faced from a French opposition determined to squash the campaign. In September, 1958, Guinea was the only colony that chose to leave France.
Two years later, in 1960, Andrée overheard two men at a nearby table speaking a language from her youth, called Lingala. They were politicians from the Belgian Congo who connected her to the leader of their nationalist party: Antoine Gizenga. He asked her to help him with the independence campaign in the Belgian Congo. Andrée met other powerful activists and became the only woman in the circle of leaders campaigning for independence. Her feminist speeches mobilized thousands of women. When the Congo did gain independence, she became a chief advisor to Patrice Lumumba, the country’s first prime minister.
Andrée’s western critics denounced her as a courtesan and a communist for her involvement in multiple African independence movements. When a journalist asked her if the latter was true, Andrée responded: “Let small fools call me what they like. I am an African nationalist.”
After Prime Minister Lumemba was assassinated, Andrée moved to Paris. She lived out the rest of her life there in an apartment on the outskirts of the city, where she would host revolutionaries and African leftists whenever they passed through.
She died on April 9, 1986. She was 65 years old.
All month, we’re talking about mothers. For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram @womanicapodcast.
Special thanks to co-creators Jenny and Liz Kaplan, for having me as a guest host.
Talk to you tomorrow!