The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil – 384 pages
Book Blurb:
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were “thunder.” In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries, searching for safety–perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted asylum in the United States, where she embarked on another journey–to excavate her past and, after years of being made to feel less than human, claim her individuality.
My Review: 4.5 stars
The Girl Who Smiled Beads just moved me to tears. What an amazing story of resilience, courage and positivity after surviving the Rwandan genocide.
“The word genocide cannot articulate the one-person experience—the real experience of each of the millions it purports to describe. The experience with a child playing dead in a pool of his father’s blood. The experience of a mother forever wailing on her knees… The word genocide cannot explain the never-ending pain, even if you live”.
This was one of the lines in Wamayira’s memoir that stuck out to me so very powerfully. We oftentimes group genocides that have occurred (or are occurring) together: Armenia, the Holocaust, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia. But the word “genocide” cannot even begin to explain what actually happened, what each individual had to endure, or suffer.
Before reading this novel I knew the basics of the Rwandan genocide, but as a Jewish woman the majority of my knowledge of genocides has centered on the Holocaust. Clemantine’s story starts at the tender age of four, when her relatively comfortable life is flipped upside down and her and her sister Claire are forced to flee their family. For six years they survive without a home, a country or a single possession. Clemantine’s journey is engaging and well told. It’s different to read the facts in a history book than to appreciate and experience them through someone’s personal story.
I also enjoyed how the book went further than just Clemantine and Claire’s survival in Africa, but their story in America as well. My only critique is that I wish I knew what Clemantine wrote, and what the second author wrote. It didn’t take anything away from this story, but it was in the back of my mind as I read.
In 2006, Elie Weisel, Nobel Peace Price recipient and author of his memoir Night, was featured on Oprah after a trip to Auschwitz. Concurrently, there was a nationwide essay contest taking place that asked to write about how Night, could be relevant in today’s world. The same show also had the fifty essay contest winners in the audience, one of whom was Clemantine. Oprah has a big surprise for her and her sister when she reunited them with their parents after twelve long years. You can view the Oprah video here.
Quotes I liked:
When you don’t belong to a country, the world decides that you don’t deserve a thing.”
– “All those countries that ended World War II by saying never again turned their backs.”
-“I’ve seen enough to know that you can be a human with a mountain of resources and you can be a human with nothing, and you can be a monster either way.”
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