Madame Champ-de-Mars

Madame Champ-de-Mars spent most of her life facing the Eiffel Tower and the park’s perfectly trimmed trees. She lived in the smart neighbourhoods, with a close-knit family: a husband and two children. If that life was possible, it was thanks to her work. Maria José was a cleaner, a nanny, a cook, a care assistant, a home help, in the service of a wealthy family living at the foot of Paris’s tallest monument. Madame Champ-de-Mars is my mother, and I ask her to tell me her story so as to write it, along with that of all the women like her, into our collective history.