It was only after the death of her grandmother Gisele that Hanaë Bossert, narrator of the podcast
Ma Tonkinoise
, truly became aware of her distance from her family heritage.
Two hermetic worlds that are yet so close collide with the two generations that separate them.
A story imbued with buried memories, against a backdrop of the Indochina war, exile, and integration at all costs.
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During her lifetime, Gisele, the narrator's grandmother, always maintained that she wanted to be buried next to her husband, in the Saint-Pierre cemetery in Marseille.
But, to everyone's surprise, when Gisele is near the end, she suddenly changes her mind, and decides to be cremated at the Pagoda in the Marseille city.
Faced with this unexpected choice, the family remains perplexed.
Why such a desire to reconnect with her origins at the moment of death, when Gisele deliberately passed this entire part of her life silent?
Memory Fragments
On the day of the funeral, Hanaë, her mother and her aunt attend the ceremony without understanding either the rites or the language spoken by the people around them.
Indeed, the Vietnamese community present that day does not know the family and vice versa, although everyone is gathered for one and the same reason.
It is this duality that pushes Hanaë to reweave the thread that separates her from her grandmother, to better understand the story of this woman who fled Vietnam and experienced the horror of a country at War, without ever experiencing it. make the slightest allusion.
Based on testimonies, reconstructed fragments and fictionalized fragments of life, Hanaë leads the investigation.
For the first time, the need to put words to what remains unsaid is felt, to understand the past takes precedence over everything else.
Knowing family history is therefore imperative.
From Indochina and the living conditions of the colonized to the disillusionment of immigrants arriving in France, Hanaë retraces the life of her grandmother Gisele, the passive transmission and the cultural heritage she leaves to the generations behind her.
“
Ma Tonkinoise
” by Hanaë Bossert for
Louie Media
, in four episodes for season 7 of the “Injustices” podcast, available on all listening platforms.