Love and hate: Constance Debré

After 20 years in a heterosexual marriage, Constance starts exploring her lesbian side. She divorces her husband, quits her job as a high-profile attorney, and makes a clean break with the bourgeois life she has led so far. Constance starts again, building a new life with new values, and a more liberated sexuality with women.
The only thing she wishes to keep from her old life, is her five-year-old son Paul, but his father accuses her of being an unfit mother and sues her for custody. While a harsh custody case unfolds over several years, Constance reflects on motherly love, queerness and the intense aversion her new identity is met with. Is there room for different ways to be a woman and a mother, and how much of your own integrity should you sacrifice for your children? What possibilities do (gay) women have for freedom and happiness in a still very patriarchal and conservative society, and what constitutes a good life?
Constance Debré made her literary debut in 2004, but had her real breakthrough in 2018 with Play boy, a reflection on her lesbian coming-out as a grown woman. Together, Play boy, Love me tender and Nom make up an autobiographical trilogy, exploring politics, gender, sexuality and freedom in contemporary France.
Debré meets journalist Emma Clare Gabrielsen for a conversation about motherhood, freedom, and the prejudice that still affects those who choose non-conventional lives.
The conversation will be in English.
This event is part of Litteraturhuset’s fokcus on lgbt+ literature, which is supported by Bufdir.