Jacqueline Manicom
Jacqueline Manicom was a Guadeloupean writer, professor, broadcaster, feminist, and midwife, author of the novels Mon examen de blanc and La graine : journal d'une sage-femme.
Early life
Manicom was born in Guadeloupe, the eldest of twenty children born to parents of South Asian origin. She trained as a midwife, and studied law and philosophy in Paris.Career
Manicom worked at a public hospital in Paris as a young woman. She also worked in radio and television, and taught philosophy courses. In the late 1960s she worked with Simone de Beauvoir on women's rights in France, was a founding member of Choisir la Cause des Femmes, and especially focused her activism on the legalization of abortion. She and her husband founded a family planning clinic in Guadeloupe.Manicom wrote two autobiographical novels in French, Mon examen de blanc and La graine : journal d'une sage-femme, both stories of Caribbean immigrant women in medical settings, both with themes of race, class, gender, and sexuality in the context of French colonialism and French Caribbean independence.