My Life, My Ethiopia

Mary Tadesse was one of the highest-ranking women to serve in the government of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. Growing up in the 1930s and ’40s in a small but influential Catholic family, her idyllic and privileged world unraveled as tumultuous political events, including the Italian Occupation and later the Marxist revolution, tore her family apart. One of a few girls sent abroad to study, first to Egypt and later postwar England, she was among the first generation of Western-educated Ethiopians to join the civil service to help rebuild and develop their war-ravaged country. Through diary entries we witness Mary’s experiences and inner struggles, and learn how a woman, through fierce determination and faith, transcends traditional bounds of her gender. Eventually she is compelled to leave her country and embrace the life of an exile.