Fadhma Aït Mansour

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Marguerite-Fadhma Aït Mansour Amrouche (1883 in Tizi Hibel, Algeria - July 9, 1967 in Saint-Brice-en-Coglès, France) was the mother of writers Jean Amrouche and Taos Amrouche.

She was born in a Kabylie village as the illegitimate daughter of a widow. Facing discrimination in her surrounding she left her village to study at a secular school. Later, when she was with the Sisters at Aït Mangouellet hospital, she converted to Roman Catholicism. She met another Kabyle Catholic convert, Antoine-Belkacem Amrouche with whom she had eight children, only two of whom lived to the time of her death. The family first moved to Tunis (where her daughter Taos was born) and then, to France.

She had a considerable impact on Jean and Taos. The folk songs she sang to her family were compiled and translated to French by Jean Amrouche in 1939 as Chants berbères de Kabylie. In 1967, Taos made a music album in Kabyle, bearing the same title. In 1968, her autobiography Histoire de ma vie was published posthumously. This book is mainly about her life she lived as a woman in purgatory, between the traditional Kabyle life and language and the colonial power France, its language, and particularly its religion; Christianity.