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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
"You cannot line up the atrocities like a matching set. You cannot bear witness with a single word."
"You could see the surprise in aid-workers' faces when you upended their worldview by revealing that you, a refugee, spoke five languages or had aced calculus or ran a successful accounting firm."
"The older girls in our building taught me the Zulu words for get away, don't look at me, step off."
"Toni Morrison wrote about blacks in America with the same question that defined my whole life: How do I survive? Every person I met, every paragraph I read, that's what I wanted to know: How are you surviving?"
"But sometimes it felt harder than ever. Claire and I had already had five types of lives and we'd built nothing. I shot down every conversation. I trusted nobody."
"In a way, the girl who smiled beads became the answer to all the puzzles....I thought I was the girl. I thought the beads were fire, through sometimes I thought the beads were water or time. In my version of the story, the girl walks the earth and she is always safe, there but not there, one step ahead."
"On the short flight to Los Angeles I told a coworker about my Mickey Mouse backpack. It still made me cry. His response was perfect. "Clem," he said, "we're going to do everything."
"You could see the surprise in aid-workers' faces when you upended their worldview by revealing that you, a refugee, spoke five languages or had aced calculus or ran a successful accounting firm."
"The older girls in our building taught me the Zulu words for get away, don't look at me, step off."
"Toni Morrison wrote about blacks in America with the same question that defined my whole life: How do I survive? Every person I met, every paragraph I read, that's what I wanted to know: How are you surviving?"
"But sometimes it felt harder than ever. Claire and I had already had five types of lives and we'd built nothing. I shot down every conversation. I trusted nobody."
"In a way, the girl who smiled beads became the answer to all the puzzles....I thought I was the girl. I thought the beads were fire, through sometimes I thought the beads were water or time. In my version of the story, the girl walks the earth and she is always safe, there but not there, one step ahead."
"On the short flight to Los Angeles I told a coworker about my Mickey Mouse backpack. It still made me cry. His response was perfect. "Clem," he said, "we're going to do everything."
emotional
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
Memoirs are always hard to review. Why would I get to decide if someone's life story is good or not.
This story is full of tragedy, heartbreak, and perseverance. There is no happily ever after. There is no resolution because the person is still alive and continues on her path.
This story is full of tragedy, heartbreak, and perseverance. There is no happily ever after. There is no resolution because the person is still alive and continues on her path.
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Violence, Murder
Moderate: Rape, Sexism, War
Minor: Domestic abuse
I added this memoir to my TBR 5 years ago, because 5 years ago is when I first heard of the attrocity that Wamariya experienced. I was dismayed that in all my education, I had never heard about what happened in Rwanda. I had to learn about it through a Snapchat story from Vice, if I'm remembering correctly. I can't believe that my school district spent 2 years on Idaho history and didn't even mention this.
Now that I have that rant over with, the actual "review." I use the term review loosely because I have complex feelings on what it means to review a memoir. When someone is telling their own personal story, you can't turn around and say it was good or bad or critique the plot. What I will say, is that Wamariya's writing is incredibly beautiful. Her experiences are heartbreaking, but she incorporates balance in the way she tells her story by alternating the grim days in the refugee camps with her experiences as a refugee in the United States. This contrast just serves to reinforce the hope that is her message.
I'm giving this memoir 5 stars because I genuinely believe that it is beautiful and essential for us to read and learn histories like this that we have not been taught. And if I believed this book to be anything less, I would leave the rating blank.
Now that I have that rant over with, the actual "review." I use the term review loosely because I have complex feelings on what it means to review a memoir. When someone is telling their own personal story, you can't turn around and say it was good or bad or critique the plot. What I will say, is that Wamariya's writing is incredibly beautiful. Her experiences are heartbreaking, but she incorporates balance in the way she tells her story by alternating the grim days in the refugee camps with her experiences as a refugee in the United States. This contrast just serves to reinforce the hope that is her message.
I'm giving this memoir 5 stars because I genuinely believe that it is beautiful and essential for us to read and learn histories like this that we have not been taught. And if I believed this book to be anything less, I would leave the rating blank.
It always feels weird to rate someone's actual experiences that they lived. I don't know what I'm supposed to say about that. But as memoirs go, this was very well done. It was honest, it was uncomfortable and nuanced, and it was a take on the Rwandan genocide, refugees, and families that go through that kind of thing that I hadn't read before.
Excellent. What I found especially compelling was Wamariya's anger, especially as it manifested itself toward people who were trying to make her into a representation of a refugee. She refuses to be trotted out as an example. She demands people really look at her, not as a refugee but as a person.
A compelling, horrifying yet inspiring memoir. So thankful that Clemantine shared her story.
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
sad
The Girl Who Smiled Beads is a powerful recounting of Clementine Wamariya's experiences as a refugee who together with her sister, Claire, fled the genocide in their native Rwanda in 1994. Interspersed with memories of her time in a series of refugee camps in various countries across southern Africa is a recounting of Wamariya's experiences after she, Claire, and Claire's young children were granted asylum in the United States in 2000.
Wamariya is fiercely resistant to any facile framing of her story. She doesn't want to be uplifting or inspirational; she doesn't want to be pitied or to perform the role of "grateful refugee." Instead, with determined honesty she documents how both her time in the camps and her time being raised by a white Evangelical family in the middle-class Chicago suburbs gave her different kinds of trauma and alienation to wrestle with. A vivid exploration of the human cost of war.
Wamariya is fiercely resistant to any facile framing of her story. She doesn't want to be uplifting or inspirational; she doesn't want to be pitied or to perform the role of "grateful refugee." Instead, with determined honesty she documents how both her time in the camps and her time being raised by a white Evangelical family in the middle-class Chicago suburbs gave her different kinds of trauma and alienation to wrestle with. A vivid exploration of the human cost of war.