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The Communist Question
Jeanne The Woman in Red is a work of biographical fiction based on the life of Jeanne Tunica Y Casas, a fiery, uncompromising political activist, feminist, communist, and a woman of courage. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
If I had written a non-fiction account of Jeanne’s life and work, it would have sounded robotic and lacking in truth. Fiction was the only way to delve deep into her life and times. Many people she knew and worked with had passed away or were reluctant to speak or give any information. I understand and respect that, but facts, figures, and exact dates would have been missing. There is not much out there in English, and the work done, predominantly by a New Caledonian historian, provided a solid foundation from which to write. I had access to her articles, tracts, and speeches, and I was able to integrate this into the story as they had been written—typos and all.
I have always been inspired by strong characters in fiction and non-fiction. I was drawn to Jeanne straightaway. I had just arrived in New Caledonia for three years, and I was browsing its history, and I came across Jeanne. I wanted to visit her at the cemetery, pay my respects, but I discovered she had been buried in a common grave. I could not believe it. Disheartened but determined, I contacted the administration and decided that writing the book is only half of it. I wanted her recognised with a plaque. She fought for the rights of exploited peoples, and I wanted to fight for her legacy. Her remains were located, and a plaque now recognises her at a local cemetery. It has been a hard but satisfying journey.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Her relationship with her lover turned husband, Paco. The communist question. How much or how little did she know about Stalin’s atrocities? The right of women to vote. I wanted back-and-forth chapters where her life in the nursing home meets the past.
Did you find anything in your research of this story that surprised you?
I was surprised that she had lived in Australia for a while and opened up a restaurant in Sydney. Her continual battle with the authorities. She never gave up. I was also disappointed with a few reactions as if writing about a communist makes the writer a communist. This is not the case, and I could never have placed 2020 eyes on Jeanne’s life and get away with writing her story.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Jeanne The Woman in Red?
That she, like many others, must be remembered for inspiring and encouraging change without violence, and that history, far from being cancelled, should be remembered and studied – the good and the bad and learn the lessons on how to move forward. I am not just talking about feminists and politicians, but people who did not have a public role but were instrumental in shaping future generations.
The book has been translated into French and will soon be released.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Jeanne The Woman In Red
Jeanne The Woman in Red is a literary historical novel that follows the life of Jeanne Tunica Y Casas, a fiery, uncompromising political activist whose story unfolds across New Caledonia, the New Hebrides, France, and beyond. The book moves between her final years in a nursing home in the late 1960s and vivid recollections of her political battles, her marriage to Paco, and the people and places she loved. It’s a portrait of a woman who refuses to soften or apologize, even as age and loss begin to close in around her.
This book feels intimate. As if Jeanne were sitting across from me, telling stories that run on nerves and conviction rather than nostalgia. The writing has a rawness I didn’t expect. Scenes of the nursing home feel almost claustrophobic with their vinyl chairs, faint smells, and the slow drip of Jeanne’s frustration. Then the narrative swings wide open into her past, where she teaches children under mango trees, writes furious letters, argues politics with anyone brave enough, and paints scenes that reveal more about her spirit than any speech could. The author’s choice to weave Jeanne’s inner voice with historical detail gives the story both grit and tenderness. It is a quiet kind of political novel, but political all the same, carried by the force of one woman who refuses to be small.
What struck me most was how unapologetically the book stays with Jeanne’s contradictions. She is compassionate one moment and sharp enough to cut the next. She is grieving but stubborn. She is certain of her beliefs, sometimes to the point of alienating those who might have helped her. And yet the book never asks me to judge her. It just lets her be. Some passages read like memories folded in warm light, while others hit like sudden blows. The sensory details work best when they’re simple: a wooden floorboard Paco never fixed, a pot of chrysanthemums at a grave, the sound of children giggling through a vocabulary lesson. The author trusts these small images to carry weight, and they do.
This isn’t a sweeping epic or a fast-moving plot. It’s more like sitting with someone who has lived too intensely to fade gently. The genre sits somewhere between literary fiction and biographical historical fiction, and it will appeal most to readers who like character-driven stories, real history woven with imagination, and portraits of complicated women who challenge the world rather than charm it.
Pages: 213 | ASIN : B08CPNPNDV
Make Something New
Prickly Pears is a collection of short stories that walks the line between brutality and beauty and exposes the tenderness inside pain and the violence hidden in love with fearless, poetic precision. What inspired you to write this collection?
I have had such a rigid past, that Prickly Pears allowed me to delve into experience and observation and write about it in a non-linear manner: Break chronological moments, break patterns in time and place and make something new. On top of all that came the culture in which I grew up in, that I rejected somewhat but writing has become the mediator between past and present, two countries, two cultures. Funnily, I could only write about all this here in France away from the other two places. The journey has been both instructive and healing.
There’s a dreamlike rhythm to your language. Which writers or art forms influence that musicality?
There have been many like Winslow Homer in the visual arts. In literature, you mentioned Clarice Lispector in the review and I said Wow. Yes. She’s a tough read but well worth it, Rosario Ferré, Oriana Fallaci’s Letter to a Child Never Born, prose poets like Francis Ponge and Giovanni Verga’s tales. All blending truth, history and magical realism.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I wanted to explore universal themes, love, violence to self, to others to animals but show that acceptance, hope, resilience and determination can co-exist and move us to a different, healthier and happier path.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
Prickly Pears was a collection of pieces that were first published in literary magazines or anthologies. With my next collection, which I’ve just completed, the short pieces haven’t been submitted or published anywhere yet. I hope they will be accepted by a traditional publisher. In these stories, I experiment more with structure and format.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
Prickly Pears: A Collection of Short Fiction
Prickly Pears is a vivid and haunting collection of short stories that explores the fragile edges of humanity. Author Isabelle B.L moves through memory, war, love, loss, and womanhood with language that cuts and soothes at the same time. The stories drift from Sicily’s sunlit hills to modern kitchens, from whispering ghosts to restless children. Each piece feels like a dream you only half remember but can’t shake off. Her characters are bruised but alive, her settings rich with scent and sound. The book opens with wartime childhood and stretches into surreal, delicate tales that merge body and mind, reality and metaphor, until they blur into one another.
I kept stopping to reread sentences because they were too beautiful to move past. The author’s writing is fearless, raw, poetic, and weird in the best way. She doesn’t write to please, she writes to uncover. Sometimes I caught myself holding my breath, especially in pieces like “Marigold Dawns” and “The Jam Jar,” where ordinary acts, making tea, making jam, turn into rituals of grief and rebirth. The way she ties emotion to physical texture made me ache.
The darkness doesn’t just lurk in the corners; it sits right in the middle of the page. Some stories felt like confessions. Yet I kept reading because of how relatable it all was. There’s an honesty that burns. I could sense the author’s compassion even when her characters were cruel or broken. The rhythm of her writing carried me through it. It’s lyrical but never soft. It reminded me that pain and beauty often live in the same place, and she isn’t afraid to show that.
Prickly Pears isn’t a book for comfort; it’s a book for feeling. It’s for readers who like language that stings a little, who aren’t afraid of stories that leave scratches. I’d recommend it to anyone who loves short fiction. If you enjoy authors like Carmen Maria Machado or Clarice Lispector, you’ll find something electric here.
Pages: 205 | ASIN: B0C8841Q2C
LITERARY TITAN 