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923 reviews for:
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After
Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
4.25 AVERAGE
923 reviews for:
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After
Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
4.25 AVERAGE
This is around 3.75. It's wonderful and poignant and a little heartbreaking, but I wanted more. Some parts were just briefly touched on, and there were occasional time jumps where I wanted more detail.
challenging
reflective
This is easily one of the most valuable memoirs of our time. Brutal, relevant, vexing, refreshing--Clemantine (cleman-TEEN) Wamariya gives us all of herself, her Rwandan, refugee, American self, in a neat package with brilliant intonation and outright honesty.
Recommend for everyone to read.
Recommend for everyone to read.
If you want a feel-good story with a happy Oprah ending, this may not be the book for you. If you really want to read a book about trauma and its aftermath, this is your book right here. That's not to say there are not moments of triumph and success, just that Wamariya steadily refuses to make things easy for you (the reader). She maintains her right to tell her own, complicated story. And that is a beautiful thing.
It feels disrespectful to "really like" a book that outlines a refugee's experience of wandering through seven different countries and struggling to fit in, find herself, to relate with her family. There's no happy ending, no full closure or moral here. It's a slightly detached but real account of the serious struggles a child has and always will have from her experiences of growing up with nothing, not even love or safety.
What I appreciate about the book is that it helped me see a glimpse of what it could be like to be a refugee. Obviously this is one story, told as an adult thinking back to a childhood, and told by someone who eventually "escaped" that world (though it never leaves her) and finds American success. Her pain is real, her relationships are all very hard. She does not know how to handle the brokenness. And who does? She does conclude with realizing it is essential to turn her experience into a narrative for herself. We need to see our lives as a story.
I appreciate the peek into a life that is not my own, an experience I cannot relate to. It leaves me feeling helpless, because I can do nothing to make any of it better. And if I don't recognize that I can't take Clemantine's story and apply it to other refugees, then I've not understood the book either. For example, Claire (her older sister and the only one who went through a similar experience , at least superficially) does not have the same story, the same way of dealing or living. Her mother has a totally different approach again. No one will deal with it the same way. We want simple answers and explanations, to draw lines from A to B. This book tells us that is not possible.
Not a simple read, (not graphic), not an easy situation to digest or accept. But a part of our world.
What I appreciate about the book is that it helped me see a glimpse of what it could be like to be a refugee. Obviously this is one story, told as an adult thinking back to a childhood, and told by someone who eventually "escaped" that world (though it never leaves her) and finds American success. Her pain is real, her relationships are all very hard. She does not know how to handle the brokenness. And who does? She does conclude with realizing it is essential to turn her experience into a narrative for herself. We need to see our lives as a story.
I appreciate the peek into a life that is not my own, an experience I cannot relate to. It leaves me feeling helpless, because I can do nothing to make any of it better. And if I don't recognize that I can't take Clemantine's story and apply it to other refugees, then I've not understood the book either. For example, Claire (her older sister and the only one who went through a similar experience , at least superficially) does not have the same story, the same way of dealing or living. Her mother has a totally different approach again. No one will deal with it the same way. We want simple answers and explanations, to draw lines from A to B. This book tells us that is not possible.
Not a simple read, (not graphic), not an easy situation to digest or accept. But a part of our world.
Beautiful and thought-provoking story about a young girl, and later women, finding her indentity and dealing with the horrors of the past. The writing style of this author is very accesible and clear as well.
Deeply disturbing and shattering. I still cannot fully wrap my head around what I’ve just read. This is an account marked by innocence which slowly transforms into anger in the course of the book - the story of survival and the emotion turmoil that follows. The only downside was the writing itself. It was too bland at times and I would have expected a variety of vocabulary rather than a similar sentence structure and use of the same words throughout. A must-read nonetheless to broaden your horizon.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced