?Maybe I got a dirty face ?n cracked skin, but Mister, my hands are white My hands are white ?cause I had ?em in water all my life.? So begins the hilarious rant of Antonine Maillet's famous Acadian washerwoman, originally written and widely performed as a dramatic monologue. The feisty 72-year-old narrator of Maillet's beloved work is a dirt-poor charwoman and former part-time prostitute; of her 12 children, only the three born in the warm months survived. While scrubbing, La Sagouine recites her life story, hitting all the taboo topics as well as everything from social injustice to the moon landing. La Sagouine was Maillet's first major book. Giving a richly demotic voice to the doubly disenfranchised francophones of the Maritimes, it established Maillet internationally as the voice of Acadia. Maillet's most popular work, La Sagouine, has sold well over 100,000 copies in French and English.