María Arondo, ¿a representative voice of Spanish maids in Paris? Class, gender, race and migration

Abstract

The autobiographical narrative Moi, la bonne (Me, the maid) written by a Spanish domestic worker was published in Paris, Stock editions, in 1975. María Arondo had emigrated in 1963 and started to work in different employments in domestic service, until she turned a full-time union representative in the JOC, a working Christian trade-union. Her report is a modest worker woman’s speech, but also a foreigner’s one, as well as to a woman’s –working in women’s tasks– one. In addition, Arondo’s narrative fits into an historical context of constant Spanish immigration in France, where the profile of the maid is still in imaginaries. Her awareness of the different discriminations she suffered and her way to defy them will be analysed in order to contextualize her discoursed. A working class, woman’s, immigrant’s and empowered voice who refers her progressive construction of a class, gender and race identity, related to her working and activism experience.