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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
I rarely write reviews of books. This book was both a page turner and a very challenging read for me. I feel embarrassed by the fact that I know so little about this conflict while being the same age as the author. I also feel challenged to learn more about this conflict, especially since genocides and wars like the one in Rwanda are not a think of the past. I definitely highly recommend this book!
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya (co-written with Elizabeth Weil) is an incredible true story of survival. Wamariya was six years old when she and her older sister fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries, searching for safety, not knowing what had happened to their family, before finally being granted asylum in the United States.
Rather than being a detailed non-fiction account of precisely all the events that occurred, The Girl Who Smiled Beads is a memoir about the human experience and what it was like to live through the things she did. Wamariya's voice is so powerful, and the audiobook, which I listened to, has excellent narration by Robin Miles as well as a bonus discussion by Wamariya at the end. My only complaint was that I found the timeline difficult to follow, especially on audiobook (my hard copy has the year at the beginning of each chapter, but the audio narration did not). The Girl Who Smiled Beads is at once honest, emotional, passionate, and inspiring. Wamariya's story will definitely stick with me.
Rather than being a detailed non-fiction account of precisely all the events that occurred, The Girl Who Smiled Beads is a memoir about the human experience and what it was like to live through the things she did. Wamariya's voice is so powerful, and the audiobook, which I listened to, has excellent narration by Robin Miles as well as a bonus discussion by Wamariya at the end. My only complaint was that I found the timeline difficult to follow, especially on audiobook (my hard copy has the year at the beginning of each chapter, but the audio narration did not). The Girl Who Smiled Beads is at once honest, emotional, passionate, and inspiring. Wamariya's story will definitely stick with me.
challenging
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
I knew very little about the Rwanda genocide before reading this book and I still know very little. While I didn't always love the style of the book, the story is compelling and Clemantine and her sister Claire have lived incredible lives. 5 stars for the story itself since this is a book that isn't meant to be reviewed.
dark
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Described as a Rwandan war memoir, this memoir largely focuses on what happened to Wamariya after the war, including her time spent travelling across Sub-Saharan Africa in various refugee camps and eventually asylum in the United States. Notably, Wamariya ascended to prominence as a teen after being reuinted with her family on Oprah.
At times incisive, especially when Wamariya tears into her frustrations with the language used to describe "genocide" (scare quotes because she bristles against that very word, which I've avoided using in this review), too often, this book seems to be hiding an even more cutting book between the lines. Wamariya alludes to the discomfort, on an existential level, surrounding her Oprah appearance, including feelings of guilt, but does not delve too deeply into it, likely because the questioning this too extensively might reflect badly on Oprah and/or herself.
Worse yet, at times—perhaps because of, or worse, in spite of, her co-author—language that trivializes war creeps into the narrative: a messy, busy apartment is described as "a war zone," for instance, undercutting a powerful chapter about the effect of language in describing and potentially sanitizing violence. And while the memoir, like many others, engages with outside works—in this case, Toni Morrison, Elie Wiesel, and W.G. Sebald—the mentions of these authors are lip-service at best. In the case of Sebald, a facile reading undercuts the power and ambiguity of his work.
Most questionable of all was a brief nod towards Ayaan Hirsi Ali as writing formative work for her. Wamariya has every right to take solace in whatever she needs, and I can understand how she felt kinship in someone else who wrote about being the victim of misogynistic violence in Africa. But I'm not sure one can mention Hirsi Ali without noting her later allegiance with far-right, neo-fascist politicians and thinkers—the sort of people who, with too much power, could go on to perpetrate violence not unlike the violence that ravaged Wamariya's childhood, and whose actions have, one might argue, already exacerbated the refugee crisis.
At times incisive, especially when Wamariya tears into her frustrations with the language used to describe "genocide" (scare quotes because she bristles against that very word, which I've avoided using in this review), too often, this book seems to be hiding an even more cutting book between the lines. Wamariya alludes to the discomfort, on an existential level, surrounding her Oprah appearance, including feelings of guilt, but does not delve too deeply into it, likely because the questioning this too extensively might reflect badly on Oprah and/or herself.
Worse yet, at times—perhaps because of, or worse, in spite of, her co-author—language that trivializes war creeps into the narrative: a messy, busy apartment is described as "a war zone," for instance, undercutting a powerful chapter about the effect of language in describing and potentially sanitizing violence. And while the memoir, like many others, engages with outside works—in this case, Toni Morrison, Elie Wiesel, and W.G. Sebald—the mentions of these authors are lip-service at best. In the case of Sebald, a facile reading undercuts the power and ambiguity of his work.
Most questionable of all was a brief nod towards Ayaan Hirsi Ali as writing formative work for her. Wamariya has every right to take solace in whatever she needs, and I can understand how she felt kinship in someone else who wrote about being the victim of misogynistic violence in Africa. But I'm not sure one can mention Hirsi Ali without noting her later allegiance with far-right, neo-fascist politicians and thinkers—the sort of people who, with too much power, could go on to perpetrate violence not unlike the violence that ravaged Wamariya's childhood, and whose actions have, one might argue, already exacerbated the refugee crisis.
challenging
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced