A review by daggry
Deogratias, a Tale of Rwanda by Alexis Siegel, Jean-Philippe Stassen

1.0

This was not a white Belgian's story to tell, and it shows. Both the characters and the context are flat and intensely othered. It's no wonder that among the reviews of this graphic novel you can find references to "tribal strife" and "civil war," neither of which are appropriate terms. The historical overview in the foreword was important, but the story failed to demonstrate the formative and deadly impact of that colonial history. Nor, sadly, is there a sense of the vibrance and realness of lives and communities outside of the genocide. There's more to Rwanda than violence and trauma, but the story needed fuller, more realized characters to show that.