The Besaïd Family

Born Irma Bénichou in Blida, Algeria, Irma Ychou contributed to Judeo-Maghrebi literature, intermixing the French language with Hebrew, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic, and Judeo-Alsatian. Her protagonists are Jewish Algerian women adapting to challenges of identity, both cultural and linguistic, caught between tradition and modernity, Africa and Europe. The mother and daughter in La Famille Bensaïd represent a rapidly evolving trend away from tradition, the daughter in particular rejecting the notion of a compulsory marriage. Ychou used a second pseudonym, Irma Van Lawick, to write even more freely about women’s emancipation. Readers of Le Chéroub, published in 1962, were shocked by its erotic portrayal of a young woman who dresses like a boy to seduce both men and women.