Yamina Méchakra (1949 Meskiana – 2013 Algiers) was an Algerian novelist and psychiatrist.[1]
Early life
Méchakra was born in 1949 in Meskiana in northern Aures. At age nine, she began writing; taking notes in a "log-book" that grew over time. Two events profoundly marked her childhood: her father was tortured by the French during the Algerian Civil War before her eyes, exposed in the street, attached to the barrel of a tank.[2][3] Little more is known of her life, although Kateb Yacine wrote in the preface to her book that she had a "cruel and troubled life".[4][notes 1]
Career
Méchakra began writing her first novel in 1973, while studying psychiatry at the University of Algiers. Her university thesis in literature was devoted to Apuleius of Madaurus.[notes 2] In Algiers, she met Kateb Yacine before his departure for Rome and Paris. Yamina Méchakra followed Yachine's style in writing, who gave her extended advice and guidance. She needed to rewrite three times to finish her first book, and "La Grotte éclatée" was published in 1979.[7] Yamina Mechakra argued that women was the source of the nation and the founding of an independent state.[8] Referring to the Berber queen known as La Kahina[notes 3], Kateb Yacine titled his preface of the novel as The Children of Kahina.
While she continued to write during the succeeding years, but did not publish, confiding to a reporter that she lost her manuscripts. In 1997, when she treated a young boy as a psychiatrist, she was inspired writing her second novel Arris, which was published in 1999.[4] Yamina Mechakra is also a committed author who supported the importance of a cultural revolution in Algeria in the process of decolonization.
Death
She died in Algiers on May 19, 2013, at the age of 64, following a long illness. On May 20, 2013, a memorial was held at the Palace of Culture [fr],[10] and she was buried the same day in the cemetery of Sidi Yahia.[11]
Arris: roman, suivi du supplément collectif [Arris: Novel, followed by collective supplement] (in French). series: Algérie littérature/action. Paris: Marsa. 2000. OCLC948996415.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
Notes
^Kateb Yacine wrote the preface of La Grotte éclatée, and told that Méchakra dedicated the novel to her father as he writes: "She was born on the eve of the insurrection. When she hears talk of war, for the first time, she thinks it is a storm. In popular Arabic, ‘guirra’, means both a storm and revolutionary war, an unleashing of nature."[3]
^She wrote one novella as her narrative entitled "L'éveil du mont" published in 1976 in "al-Mujāhid al-thaqāfī" or "el-Moudjahid culturel".[5] In 1999, her novel Arris: romanin was published, as a book and as a literature in Algérie Littérature/Action.[6]
^The Berber queen known as La Kahina is the pioneering woman as a heroic warrior in Algeria, who fought against Arab invaders in the eighth century A.D.[9]
^Caws, Mary Ann; et al., eds. (1996). Ecritures de femmes: nouvelles cartographies [Scriptures of women: new cartographies] (in French). New Haven & London: Yale University Press. p. 169.
^The Moufdi Zakaria Palace of Culture is an exhibition and conference palace located on the plateau of Annasser in the town of Kouba, Algeria, named after Moufdi Zakaria, the Algerian poet, author of the Kassaman Algerian anthem. The site overlooks the city of Algiers.
