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922 reviews for:
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After
Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
4.25 AVERAGE
922 reviews for:
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After
Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
4.25 AVERAGE
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
emotional
informative
inspiring
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: War
Minor: Rape
Rwandan Genocide
Clemantine ‘s story of growing up in Rwanda, fleeing home at age 6 with her older sister, alone, is a remarkable tale. The fact that she survived is incredible. Her story is not easy, and she tells hard truths. Everyone should read this book to better understand the refugee experience.
Clemantine ‘s story of growing up in Rwanda, fleeing home at age 6 with her older sister, alone, is a remarkable tale. The fact that she survived is incredible. Her story is not easy, and she tells hard truths. Everyone should read this book to better understand the refugee experience.
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
“No, I want to scream, it’s not like the Holocaust. Or the killing fields in Cambodia. Or ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. There’s no catchall term that proves you understand. There’s no label to peel and stick that absolves you, shows you’ve done your duty, you’ve completed the moral project of remembering. This - Rwanda, my life - is a different, specific, personal tragedy just as each of those horrors was a different, specific, personal tragedy and inside all those tidily labeled boxes are 6 million, or 1.7 million, or 100,000, or 100 billion lives destroyed. You cannot line up the atrocities like a matching set. You cannot bear witness with a single word.” - Clemantine on the word genocide.
This book opened up something buried deep inside of me. I have no way of relating to the horrific and painful events that this story is about or even to the beautiful resurrection of a new life following those horrific and painful events. Clemantine’s story, as she mentions many times, is just one story. One story out of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffered the Rwandan genocide. And nevertheless it is an important story, one that reminds us that each individual person is on their own journey and has their own version of a story to tell, no matter the color of their skin, religion, hometown, culture, or the things they’ve been through in their lifetime.
This book opened up something buried deep inside of me. I have no way of relating to the horrific and painful events that this story is about or even to the beautiful resurrection of a new life following those horrific and painful events. Clemantine’s story, as she mentions many times, is just one story. One story out of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffered the Rwandan genocide. And nevertheless it is an important story, one that reminds us that each individual person is on their own journey and has their own version of a story to tell, no matter the color of their skin, religion, hometown, culture, or the things they’ve been through in their lifetime.
inspiring
sad
medium-paced