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A review by mydystopianfuture
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya
5.0
“I did not understand the point of the word genocide . . . The word is tidy and efficient. It holds no true emotion. It is impersonal when it needs to be intimate, cold and sterile when it needs to be gruesome. The word is hollow, true but disingenuous, a performance, the worst kind of lie” (Wamariya 93).
We know the word. We have heard the stories. Maybe we have even visited memorials, but Wamariya’s story reveals the real wound beneath the bandaid, the unvarnished reality of a child’s life torn apart by heinous atrocities. To borrow a word from Glennon Melton, this book is brutiul—full of the beauty and brutality of a life most of us can only imagine. Must read. Must witness. Must acknowledge. Must know.
We know the word. We have heard the stories. Maybe we have even visited memorials, but Wamariya’s story reveals the real wound beneath the bandaid, the unvarnished reality of a child’s life torn apart by heinous atrocities. To borrow a word from Glennon Melton, this book is brutiul—full of the beauty and brutality of a life most of us can only imagine. Must read. Must witness. Must acknowledge. Must know.