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tensy 's review for:
Small Country
by Gaël Faye
Midway through reading this memoir, I received a phone call from my sister to tell me that my 97 year-old uncle had passed away. This was not only heart breaking news, but also the end of a generation of my family who had immigrated from Cuba soon after Castro's rise to power. That generation came to America thinking it was going to be a temporary relocation. They would go home again and regain their old lives. They never went back. Faye, in this memoir, tells of his boyhood days in Burundi where his Rwandan mother immigrated and fell in love with their French father. He then details the horrific change that took over his country, as well as Rwanda, which resulted in a widespread genocide of the Tutsis. As much as he tries to block out the atrocities being perpetrated around him, "I wanted to make a fortress of my happiness and a chapel of my innocence," reality keeps breaking through. Near the end of the book, he tries to explain why he decides to return to Burundi, after he and his sister had been sent to France by their father, and his words truly resonated with me, especially after the death of my uncle:
"I used to think I was exiled from my country. But, in retracing the steps of my past, I have
understood that I was exiled from my childhood. Which seems even crueler."
"I used to think I was exiled from my country. But, in retracing the steps of my past, I have
understood that I was exiled from my childhood. Which seems even crueler."