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The Tears of a Man Flow Inward: Growing Up in the Civil War in Burundi by Pacifique Irankunda
100booksyearly's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
jenmooremo's review against another edition
2.0
There is a lot of good information in here and I was unaware that the clash between the Hutus and the Tutsis started in Burundi rather than Rwanda. However, I had difficulty with the layout of the themes presented and felt a bit tossed about with keeping up with the chronology and the different people that were written about.
kbreader's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
The author recounts his childhood in civil war in Burundi and his journey as an adult seeking peace afterwards. His personal accounts are interspersed with small chapters about the history of Burundi. The interchange between the two was welcomed.
Easy to read, not too long, with nice prose.
He shared stories that showed the horror of war, but not in a way that was overly emotional or traumatizing for the reader.
Enjoyed the thread throughout of the history of peacemakers/judges in his culture and country.
Appreciated that he explained both the good and evil present in his country and the people he knows.
Easy to read, not too long, with nice prose.
He shared stories that showed the horror of war, but not in a way that was overly emotional or traumatizing for the reader.
Enjoyed the thread throughout of the history of peacemakers/judges in his culture and country.
Appreciated that he explained both the good and evil present in his country and the people he knows.
liralen's review against another edition
3.0
I find it hard to look back because most of what I see when I look back is painful. One doctrine of Western psychology has long held that the cure for the pain of memory is a return to the past itself. Burundian culture holds an opposite view. I now realize that each approach has its own wisdom. But for me the past is inescapable. (xv)
Irankunda was a young child when civil war broke out in Burundi, and that war stretched to encompass his entire childhood and coming of age. His family was on and off separated and internally displaced: staying with relatives in safer areas, sleeping in the forest night after night, living with the fear that comes of not knowing whether the neighbour you help this week will be the same one to come to your house with a machete next week.
I've read a handful of memoirs about the war in Burundi, and this is one of the first in which the writer was a child—not a teenager, not an adult—when war broke out. Time has passed, but some wounds cannot heal completely, and some memories are with you forever. But it's also striking that Irankunda and his family stayed largely in their home: even as their world fell apart around them, his mother tried to hold on to what they knew. Later, and I'm not sure when exactly this was relative to the end of the war but it would have been very close to it, Irankunda studied at the same school where many of his brother's classmates had been massacred. There's so much to unpack there—it's hard to compute.
Structure-wise, I found the book to be a bit scattered, drifting between present and various points in the past. I would have liked some more concrete details, and more of a sense of what happened to the rest of his family, during the war or in general. But it ends up being a very thoughtful, painful look at culture and trauma.
Irankunda was a young child when civil war broke out in Burundi, and that war stretched to encompass his entire childhood and coming of age. His family was on and off separated and internally displaced: staying with relatives in safer areas, sleeping in the forest night after night, living with the fear that comes of not knowing whether the neighbour you help this week will be the same one to come to your house with a machete next week.
I've read a handful of memoirs about the war in Burundi, and this is one of the first in which the writer was a child—not a teenager, not an adult—when war broke out. Time has passed, but some wounds cannot heal completely, and some memories are with you forever. But it's also striking that Irankunda and his family stayed largely in their home: even as their world fell apart around them, his mother tried to hold on to what they knew. Later, and I'm not sure when exactly this was relative to the end of the war but it would have been very close to it, Irankunda studied at the same school where many of his brother's classmates had been massacred. There's so much to unpack there—it's hard to compute.
Structure-wise, I found the book to be a bit scattered, drifting between present and various points in the past. I would have liked some more concrete details, and more of a sense of what happened to the rest of his family, during the war or in general. But it ends up being a very thoughtful, painful look at culture and trauma.
james7634's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.0
I listen to this audiobook read by the author. I really vacillated between as low as 2.75 and as high as 3.75
The story of the barundee Civil War is that led to the Rwanda genocide are well documented. It’s really reflective of tribal Civil War in Africa and I think is often presented as the main case study in the US.
The author was a young boy during the first Civil War. He survived with his family through the second Civil War that was marked with the Rwanda genocide and he also is a prominent in accomplished academic in the US.
He focuses his academia on PTSD for the Burundi survivors and how modern PTSD treatment can work within the Burundi framework and of cultural views of mental health and trauma. When he writes about his experience with PTSD it’s so tragic because instead of focusing on the trauma porn of incidents that happened in the Civil War he really saw the incidents that affected him from that war via post traumatic episodes which really started to affect him once he was safe in the United States.
His description to PTSD and the trauma that he carried with him is really touching and I found it to be illuminating.
Unfortunately his narrative is presented in the perspective of someone looking back at various times in his life so the timeline isn’t linear and that got really confusing. Is he 15 and experiencing this inner pop tribal conflict or is he six and watching his schoolmates suffer under the abuse of the original Civil War.
So it was hard to maintain the linear event log but he rode with such empathy for people dealing with this traumatic response. I was really touched when he described how difficult it was to understand why college peers would play violent video games and how he didn’t want to make them feel bad for their naivety but how he struggled to listen to his roommates play call of duty.
I did not realize that the Rwanda genocide happened in part because the hutsu Where retroactively defending themselves against tutsi aggression
The Civil War experiences are tragic and really senseless. It was disturbing when he equated how tribal neighbors became aggressive over small political lax especially when he compared it to his experience in the US between blue and red voters.
The audiobook was difficult to get through because the author has a pretty thick French accent. English as a second language mixed with Burundi words made some passages difficult to hear So maybe the written book was a little bit easier to comprehend
The story of the barundee Civil War is that led to the Rwanda genocide are well documented. It’s really reflective of tribal Civil War in Africa and I think is often presented as the main case study in the US.
The author was a young boy during the first Civil War. He survived with his family through the second Civil War that was marked with the Rwanda genocide and he also is a prominent in accomplished academic in the US.
He focuses his academia on PTSD for the Burundi survivors and how modern PTSD treatment can work within the Burundi framework and of cultural views of mental health and trauma. When he writes about his experience with PTSD it’s so tragic because instead of focusing on the trauma porn of incidents that happened in the Civil War he really saw the incidents that affected him from that war via post traumatic episodes which really started to affect him once he was safe in the United States.
His description to PTSD and the trauma that he carried with him is really touching and I found it to be illuminating.
Unfortunately his narrative is presented in the perspective of someone looking back at various times in his life so the timeline isn’t linear and that got really confusing. Is he 15 and experiencing this inner pop tribal conflict or is he six and watching his schoolmates suffer under the abuse of the original Civil War.
So it was hard to maintain the linear event log but he rode with such empathy for people dealing with this traumatic response. I was really touched when he described how difficult it was to understand why college peers would play violent video games and how he didn’t want to make them feel bad for their naivety but how he struggled to listen to his roommates play call of duty.
I did not realize that the Rwanda genocide happened in part because the hutsu Where retroactively defending themselves against tutsi aggression
The Civil War experiences are tragic and really senseless. It was disturbing when he equated how tribal neighbors became aggressive over small political lax especially when he compared it to his experience in the US between blue and red voters.
The audiobook was difficult to get through because the author has a pretty thick French accent. English as a second language mixed with Burundi words made some passages difficult to hear So maybe the written book was a little bit easier to comprehend
readingwithk's review against another edition
challenging
dark
fast-paced
4.0
A really powerful and important story about discovering and preserving one’s culture in the face of colonialism and civil war.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Torture, Genocide, and War
Moderate: Rape
dgrachel's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
3.5
Pacifique Irankunda was 4 when civil war broke out in Burundi. While he provides some detail about atrocities committed during the 13 year war, those passages feel detached and nearly emotionless. The Tears of a Man Flow Inward reads more like a love letter to his homeland. You can feel his longing for the culture, the storytellers, and the sense of community that was lost or dying even before he was born, due to German and Belgian occupation.
The memoir is sad and hopeful, and it was clearly cathartic for Irankunda who writes, “the first time I wrote a story about a dreadful memory from the war, I actually felt relieved. I could control the experience”. This effort at control, of turning pain into something beautiful, does lend itself to a detached feeling as one is reading, but it’s still a well-written narrative.
The memoir is sad and hopeful, and it was clearly cathartic for Irankunda who writes, “the first time I wrote a story about a dreadful memory from the war, I actually felt relieved. I could control the experience”. This effort at control, of turning pain into something beautiful, does lend itself to a detached feeling as one is reading, but it’s still a well-written narrative.