Bio:Mireille Cottenjé

Mireille Robertine Cottenjé (18 November 1933 Mouscron - 9 January 2006 Brugge) is a Dutch-speaking Belgian writer and nurse . She published around twenty literary works, novels \, children's books, short stories and plays largely based on her personal life experiences with the need for freedom and independence as a common threme.

Life

Mireille Robertine Cottenjé was born in Mouscron on 18 November 1933 in a working-class family  . She is the second child of Julien Cottenjé (1910-1989), an anarchist, and Albertine Sintobin (1911-2002)  . The family settled in Bruges. Mireille Cottenjé attended nursery, then the nursery and primary school of the Sisters of the Order of Saint-Vincent. During the Second World War, her father was first mobilized, then arrested by the Gestapo. He fled and at the end of the war, returned home seriously injured.

In 1944, Mireille Cottenjé began her secondary studies at the Royal Lycée in Bruges, and took drama courses at the Bruges Conservatory  . She took part in sports trips to England and Scotland. After high school, in 1951, she studied psychiatric nursing at School Saint-Anne in Mons. She graduated in 1955, and began working at the Bond Moyson clinic in Ostend. She met Robert Colombie, an architect; they married on 11 February 1956. They had six children, Annemie and Patricia (1957-1957), Rick (1959-), Bart (1960-), Marjane (1963-) and Karlien (1969-). She began training at the Antwerp Tropical Institute  .

On 27 October the couple left for what was then the Belgian Congo , in the eastern province of Kivu where Robert Colombie worked at the Anti Erosive Mission (MAE). For her part, Mireille Cottenjé works as a nurse, not supported by the government  Mireille Cottenjé would later recount her Congolese experiences in her first book, Dagboek van Carla (1968) and then in Lava (1973).

When Congo gained independence in 1960, the family returned to Belgium . Mireille Cottenjé was having trouble adjusting. She worked at Flemish television, where she presented the social documentary series Wegwijzer by Paula Semer . She is an actress in the traveling theater company De Vlaamse Comedie  .

In 1963, she was pregnant and she began to rewrite her diaries, lost during the hasty return from the Congo, in the form of novels. She continued on this path, drawing inspiration from her personal experiences to write novels with an autobiographical character. Their recurring theme is freedom or lack of freedom in the marital relationship  .

She had a romantic relationship with the Flemish writer Jef Geeraerts , and undertook a several-month trip to Lapland with him, which she recounted in her book Eeuwige Zomer (1969). Jef Geeraerts tells his own version of this relationship in Indian Summer  .

In 1968, she managed to have her first novel, Dagboek van Carla, published by Nijgh & Van Ditmar. The same year, she traveled alone through South Africa .

Mireille Cottenjé separated from her husband in 1973 and goes to live in Mechelen with her four children. She will have a few more relationships but none last. Each time, she feels she is losing her freedom.

She remained alone and became an activist in the feminist movement Pluralistische Actiegroep Gelijke Rechten Man-Vrouw (PAG)  .

In 1979, she moved to Bruges with her children, to be closer to her parents. Her father died in 1989 and her husband, on 11 September 1991 .

In the first half of the 1990s, she made a few more long trips to Vietnam and South Africa, and wrote a book, Wisselspoor on the subject of teenage pregnancy. She continued to write her diaries. In 1993 she moved to Ghent .

For her last big trip, she went to Cuba with the writer Elisabeth Marain. Mireille Cottenjé died during euthanasia in Bruges on 9 January 2006.

Elisabeth Marain's novel, De laatste vlucht naar Havana about this trip to Cuba was published in 2018. It recounts the journey of the two women and offers an engaging and nuanced portrait of a writer

Works

• Dagboek van Carla (1968)
• Eeuwige zomer (1969)
• Het grote onrecht (1973)
• Lava (1973)
• Er zit muziek in de lucht (1974)
• Kort lang, lang kort (1974)
• De Heilige kooi
• Lieve Daddy (1975)
• Straks is allang voorbij (1976)
• Met 13 aan tafel (1977)
• Dertien mannen aan tafel (1978)
• Mist (1979)
• Muren doorbreken (1980)
• Waarom niet de waarheid? (1980)
• Zeg nu zelf: het gevangenisleven van een bink (1981)
• De verkeerde minnaar (1982)
• Ma gaat er vandoor(1982)
• Zo'n zeer bijzondere zondag (1986)
• Te klein voor de waarheid (1987)
• Octopus (1987)
• Jooris Van Hulle (1988)
• Wisselspoor (1991)
• Ik ben steeds op dorreis

Works in English

• Cottenjé, Mireille (1985). Journal de Carla. ISBN 978-2-87121-002-3.