You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
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
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
It seems wrong to rate this book, the horrifying story of a girl who barely survived the Rwanda genocide. But this story is important and so I’m giving it 5 stars.
This is so important because it is a true account of Clemantine living and experiencing the Rwandan genocide, as well as grappling with it going forward in life. All throughout, she was so real about all she endured. She never tried to fluff it up for anyone's comfort. This must have been painful to detail and I give her a great deal of credit for sharing her story. Many of us will never fully understand her experiences just from reading it, but I recommend picking this up and learning from her.
emotional
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
I'm not sure I have the words to give this book even an adequate review. Raw, spare, and true this memoir demands demands your attention, and shares one of the most authentic voices I've read.
While this is not at all a happy book, I think it is important to read. Mind you I was reading this book while listening to an audiobook about a serial killer, so I was on a roll for listening to depressing things. The book bounces back and forth between Clemantine’s time as a refugee and her time after she came to America. There are a lot of things in this book that I will never be able to connect with. Something that struck me is that Wamariya points out that no genocide is truly alike, but we like to just simply compare them to each other and say that everything is like the Holocaust, because that is the genocide that we know best. I have the privilege of being an American and this book is a bit of a slap in the face and a wake up call; to read and then not think that you don’t have privilege as an American is pretty impossible. It is a privilege to wake up everyday and go to my job and go home to my husband and know where my next meal is coming from. I’ve never had to go on the run or leave my home. I’m trying to be better about reading books that will open my eyes and make me think.
Wamariya crossed Africa and escaped Rwanda with her older sister Claire. Everyone else from her family was left behind. She never saw some of her family members again. Things were not easy. They had to keep moving from place to place. Claire eventually had children and then had to worry about them as well as her younger sister. I wouldn’t say that Claire was braver than Clemantine, but I commend her for being an older sister and making sure that the two of them stayed alive. She was crafty and resilient; she even set up a black market in one of their refugee camps.
Throughout her time as a refugee, Clemantine felt like she had no power. As a refugee I feel like that has to be true, but to be a child is a whole different story. She had to go when her sister said to go. She had very little that actually belonged to her.
I find the idea of the two girls inside Clemantine to be very interesting. She feels like she has to act one way to be looked at as a good girl, but she feels like there is a meaner girl inside of her. She talks in her nice girl voice to other people, but points out how this is a nice girl voice.
When she is older Clemantine travels back to Rwanda. I can only imagine how she must have felt doing that. We can read about it, but we will never truly understand how she felt in those moments.
No MVP given for Non-Fiction!
Wamariya crossed Africa and escaped Rwanda with her older sister Claire. Everyone else from her family was left behind. She never saw some of her family members again. Things were not easy. They had to keep moving from place to place. Claire eventually had children and then had to worry about them as well as her younger sister. I wouldn’t say that Claire was braver than Clemantine, but I commend her for being an older sister and making sure that the two of them stayed alive. She was crafty and resilient; she even set up a black market in one of their refugee camps.
Throughout her time as a refugee, Clemantine felt like she had no power. As a refugee I feel like that has to be true, but to be a child is a whole different story. She had to go when her sister said to go. She had very little that actually belonged to her.
I find the idea of the two girls inside Clemantine to be very interesting. She feels like she has to act one way to be looked at as a good girl, but she feels like there is a meaner girl inside of her. She talks in her nice girl voice to other people, but points out how this is a nice girl voice.
When she is older Clemantine travels back to Rwanda. I can only imagine how she must have felt doing that. We can read about it, but we will never truly understand how she felt in those moments.
No MVP given for Non-Fiction!
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
reflective
challenging
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Listened to the audiobook
Wow. Wamariya writes beautifully and brutally honestly about her journey of fleeing from Rwanda and through six other African countries—with her tough, hustling older sister Claire—during and after the Rwandan genocide. She recalls her experiences through her childlike point of view, which allows for a painfully pure set of painful memories, betrayals, horrors, and sometimes a steeled numbness. She shares her views of the world, her often jarring experiences in the US—with her sister and family on weekends in inner city Chicago and her weekday life and schooling in wealthy Kenilworth, then Hotchkiss and Yale and beyond—and her search to help other refugees’ stories be known and for her own peace.
The tone and voice is like poetry at times, raw and spare and true.
The tone and voice is like poetry at times, raw and spare and true.