Mes ancêtres les Gauloises: une autobiographie de la France par Élise Thiébaut

Abstract

Reviewed by: Mes ancêtres les Gauloises: une autobiographie de la France par Élise Thiébaut Sharon L. Fairchild Thiébaut, Élise. Mes ancêtres les Gauloises: une autobiographie de la France. Découverte, 2019. ISBN 978-2-348-03768-9. Pp. 267. Compelled by the claims of contemporary alarmists about the disappearance of the white race, the threat to national identity, and other extremist right-wing positions, Thiébaut examines her own "pure" French origins through the prism of the privileges from which she has benefited, due to this inheritance. Her intention is to explore the national narrative in order to reveal the unspoken or unacknowledged truths about France through an examination of her origins and her family's experiences, focusing on the women. Thiébaut's narrative begins with her DNA test, revealing her most distant origins, and ends with discoveries about her more recent relatives resulting from a search into family photo albums, letters, and history. These family members come alive through period photos displayed on the book cover, which are complemented by short biographies found at the end of the book. The snapshots and biographies not only help the reader follow the narrative, but also lend a personal tenor to a text that ranges over a broad field of subjects from the science of genetics and prehistory to current politics and society in a somewhat meandering style. Thiébaut's experience of tracing her ancestry through her DNA leads her to discuss myriad issues surrounding DNA—its discovery, the science of its structure, the reasons people decide to get a DNA test. She delves into how this information is used from the banal to medical, political (white supremacy, anti-Semitism), and commercial purposes. Her curiosity about how she might be descended from Neanderthal man results in several passages on the discovery of prehistoric man and other prehistoric subjects, such as the discovery of when gene markers for whiteness appeared on the western European continent. She shows how the transition to the Neolithic period, a more patriarchal society, impacted women's strength and status. After these revelations about her earliest origins, Thiébaut's work focuses on ways in which her ancestors' experiences and actions played into certain French cultural realities. For example, her investigation leads her, unexpectedly, to understand the development of the myth of [End Page 259] French seduction. The discovery that her great-grandmother had been a "courtisane" in the mid-nineteenth century launches Thiébaut into the issues of the feminine condition, prostitution, the status of illegitimate children, and the stigma of unmarried mothers. Examples of the latter situation are found on both sides of her family tree. Thiébaut maintains the reader's interest throughout by including stories of her great-grandmothers and grandmothers connecting the story of her personal inheritance to several contemporary issues. Later chapters become more engaging as the links to specific family members' lives take more precedence. Slave trade in Marseille, where her family roots are deep, colonialism, the Catholic religion and missionary work, the Second World War, and the Algerian war are subjects that she treats as she learns of her relatives' experiences with them. Thiébaut's sense of humor and personal history complement this dense text that incorporates many fields. Sharon L. Fairchild Texas Christian University, emerita Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French