When “Sad Tiger” was published in France in 2023had a great impact. In a literary panorama in which confessions and memoirs became common currency, Neige Sinno’s book that narrated the terrible experiences he had to live during his childhoodquickly distinguished itself from the rest. The reasons? Surely, the depth of an analysis that goes beyond the simple story of a victim to become an x-ray of the vulnerability of childhood.
Daughter of separated parents, raised in a small town in France, she suffered in silence for years sexual violence committed by his stepfatherwhom she managed to file complaints and take to trial as an adult, supported by her mother. The man already served his sentence and when he was released from prison he remarried and had more children. Its presence in the text is an unresolved question, repeated like an incurable wound, which triggers reflection to the ultimate consequences.
In addition to gaining the interest of all types of readers, “Triste tigre” received very important awards, including the award given by the newspaper Le Monde and the magazine Les Inrokuptibles and the Strega prize.
Neige Sinno lives today in France, is married and has a daughter. For many years she studied and lived in the United States and Mexico, working as a translator. A few days ago he was in Buenos Aires to present the book.
Here, with his perfect Spanish, he answered NOTICIAS’ questions.
News: One of the particular characteristics of “Sad Tiger” is that it is not only a shocking autobiographical story, it is also a reflection on all the long-term consequences of child abuse. What was discussed or analyzed in the media about the content of the text?
Neige Sinno: From the beginning the book was read in a literary key. But the topic of sexual abuse was also widely discussed. It has been very interesting to go back and forth between those two ways of reading it.
News: Many years passed between the trial of her abuser and the publication of “Sad Tiger.” Why did it take you so long to write about it?
Synno: The trial was in 2001 and the book was published in 2023. But this situation was very present in my fiction works. Power relationships, characters who are in a vulnerable place in the family, pain, gender. I even wrote another book that was not published, a book of short stories that can be read like a novel. It tells a bit of the same thing from the point of view of a woman who has cancer and must be at her mother’s house for a while. Then he has flashbacks of the entire story. It is quite similar but in a fictional way. I didn’t want to make a non-fictional text. I thought I wasn’t going there.
News: Another book related to this topic, the one by Vanessa Springora, “Consent”considers what it means to consent. His book is also structured based on reflection: thinking about the conditions of possibility of a testimony of abuse.
Synno: For me it is a way to include this story in a collective story. It’s my personal story, but how personal is it if you think of it as a story that happens to hundreds of thousands of people? By putting the title “Consent”, Vanessa does not talk about her personal history but about an aspect that affects us all in relation to those stories. Her experience allows her a privileged place to reflect, but it is not just about her.
News: What weight did the “MeToo” so that you decided to tell your story?
Synno: The first sentence of the book is “because me too.” I was interested in placing this one in that conversation, it is part of that conversation. I would not have written the same book in another context.
News: France has produced some of the best literary non-fiction books in recent years, with works such as Annie Ernaux or Delphine de Vigan among many others. Were you aware that your story was going to be part of that corpus?
Synno: I am at the crossroads of several traditions. I was greatly influenced by Latin American non-fiction, this boom of books that aim to tell real things from a very creative point of view. Creative nonfiction is something that interests me a lot. The richness of all the techniques and conversations that arise from this genre. Several of my teachers have been writers who came from poetry or fiction and at some point dabbled in nonfiction. They bring writing techniques or tools that they learned by composing fictional stories to analyze reality. Denis Johnson, for example, William Goldman, David Foster Wallacewriters who opened that door for me.
News: Is there something therapeutic about narrating a very traumatic experience? And, on the other hand, isn’t there a temptation to want to bury history and forget it forever?
Synno: I never wanted to be read as just a woman who has been a victim. I think it’s one of the reasons why it took me a long time to write this text. The question was how to construct my work so that I was not defined by this book alone. That was also what put it off for a long time. But I made an effort to challenge myself. Go where it was most uncomfortable. Annie Ernaux has a book called “Shame” that I think is magnificent.. There she says that shame became a sign for her. If I feel ashamed, it’s because there is something interesting there. Something to dig for. Shame points to a form of an absolute truth. It is a feeling that indicates that there is a knot of meaning in a story. At some point Ernaux says that he would like to write a book so embarrassing that after it he couldn’t go out on the street.
News: Does an abused child have shame? Or is it a feeling that appears with the adult’s entry into society?
Synno: From the beginning shame is linked to silence. Why don’t you speak? Why don’t you tell anyone? It is part of the conscious or unconscious strategies of the abuser. And it’s so embarrassing that there are no words to speak. There are two types of shame. One is an unanalyzed sensation that has to do with what Annie Ernaux says in “Shame.” She talks about a scene that occurred in her family. His father, in a moment of fury, tries to kill his mother. And it is something so shameful that it feels like another reality. And then there is the other shame, the social shame of speaking in public about a taboo subject.
News: You also refer to the fact of being a person “damaged” by abuse, a damage that goes beyond the sexual sphere and has influence on other areas of life.
Synno: The person does not only have sexual damage. The damage is to the being and even to the very perception of existence. It is something that is repeated in the testimonies. A wound to one’s own perception of existing. Your existence is truly the heart of darkness. The wound touches your entire being, not just the sexual aspect. That is a cliché, an idea that society has a priori. This lends some support to the hypothesis that rape is a question of power and domination. It is a total domination that goes far beyond the sexual. Violating a body is violating a being. That reading key seemed important to me. It illuminates a perception that I feel confusing. If it is a power relationship, if it is oppression, it allows me to understand what has happened to me.
News: Surely, by not wanting to be the victim, the abused person does not forgive themselves for their weakness.
Synno: It’s something I question in the book. Why am I running away from this? I have been a victim. I am a victim. Why would I want to write from another place? I am this girl who has been raped, but I am also part of that society and I have prejudices. I am not writing against a society that does not understand me. I am also the person who doesn’t understand. The first sentence of the book that says “Me too” does not say I have also been a victim. He says “I also feel that fascination with violence.” It is a way to give another focus to the problem. “MeToo” has to be that opportunity to think without imagining that we have a priori solutions. At some moments we need them, they serve us, but sometimes we have to let them go and explore the complexity more. And I think it is very beautiful to return to that tradition that you pointed out before. Christine Angot writes in “Incest”, in 1999, that she had no choice but to write a very violent text. Society did not want to hear anything at all. I had to attack the reader to say “what happened to me is something serious.” Me, 20 years later, I don’t have the need to do this. This door is now open and I can allow myself to let more complex things emerge.
News: One of the big questions in your book is how to deal with the figure of the abuser. Because jail is not a solution to stop them. But society does not seriously question this conflict.
Synno: Because it’s something we don’t want to see. Now we are rehabilitating the figure of the victims and giving them a voice. Hundreds of thousands of victims who are hundreds of thousands of abusers who are among us. In France, a book was published last year called “Those Men Among Us” (by Gabrielle Arena). It is essential to question ourselves as a society what we do with sexual education, with the education of men. What do we do with this that is happening all the time, because we are realizing that maintaining the taboo is perpetuating relationships of domination. I don’t have an answer but I find it interesting that we go beyond a trial: it has already been punished, we forget about the monster. It would be too easy and our reality is not easy. If we really want something to change, we are also going to have to think about how we react as a society in relation to these men.
News: Her abuser was released from prison one day, remarried and today has other children. I relate it to another topic that you touch on in the book regarding your hyperattention to all the kids you meet, so that they are not suffering something similar to what you had to experience in your childhood.
Synno: It’s like a terrifying key. This conversation exists in our family. I tell my daughter that she can trust me and I try to create all the conditions for her to ask me for help if she needs it. But it is very likely that if it is happening to you, you will not be able to tell me. Because it’s part of this trauma, it’s part of how this works. For me as a mother it is terrifying to know that no one is exempt, no one is protected. Childhood is a place of vulnerability. In France among feminists the question arises of where the abuse begins. Where is the limit? Yell at a child, punish him, threaten him. This violence is in me too. This possibility of becoming an abusive person is also within me. It is in everyone. It’s not all black and white, the monster on one side and the victim on the other. The entire book is constructed to allow me to explore this darkness as well.
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