Scholastique Mukasonga was born in 1956 in the southwest of Rwanda, by the Rukarara river. In 1959, the first pogroms against the Tutsi shattered the country. In 1960, her family was deported with many other Tutsi to Nyamata in the inhospitable, scrubland province of Bugesera. Her family lived in a refugee camp after this expulsion from their home village, where she survived despite repeated persecutions and massacres. Her mother Stefania devoted her attention to her children, one way in which Mukasonga moved beyond her initial station. Despite the limited quota which only admitted 10% of Tutsi to secondary schools, she attended first the Lycée Notre-Dame-de-Citeaux in Kigali, then a social worker school in Butare. "It was the only girls' school that allowed me to go back to the villages and use my profession to help others who didn't have the chance to access a school," explains Mukasonga. In 1973, Tutsi schoolchildren were driven out of schools, as well as Tutsi civil servants from their positions. As a result, she had to leave, exiled to Burundi to escape certain death. She completed her studies as a social worker in Burundi and began work for UNICEF. Mukasonga arrived in France in 1992 and had to retake the test for social workers, as the diploma she received in Burundi was not recognized by the French administration. From 1996-1997, she was a social worker for the students of the University of Caen. From 1998 to present, she executes the function of judicial (legal) representative for the Union départementale des associations familiales de Calvados (Departmental Union of Family Associations of Calvados). She currently lives in Lower Normandy.