Goutu's story begins with a birth and a death when, barely a year old, she
accidentally crawls into the birth-death room in her house. She sees the blood
and smells the fear and the dark. Her mother and her just-born brother have died
there. Thus begins Goutu's life and her fear of the dark.For Goutu, darkness is
death, light is life. Throughout her life, as Goutu grows from childhood through
adolescence to adulthood and then old age, she remains a fighter, a rebel, a
liar for whom lying becomes a strategy for survival, a woman who will not deny
her sexuality, a mother who remains something