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A review by laurenkd89
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya
4.0
“I’ve seen enough to know that you can be a human with a mountain of resources and you can be a human with nothing, and you can be a monster either way. Everywhere, and especially at both extremes, you can find monsters. It’s at the extremes that people are most scared—scared of deprivation, one one end; and scared of their privilege, on the other. With privilege comes a nearly avoidable egoism and so much shame, and often the coping mechanism is to give. This is great and necessary, but giving, as a framework, creates problems. You give, I take; you take, I give—both scenarios establish hierarchy. Both instill entitlement. The only road to equality—a sense of common humanity; peace—is sharing, my mother’s orange. When we share, you are not using your privilege to get me to line up behind you. When we share, you are not insisting on being my savior. Claire and I always looked for the sharers, the people who just said, ‘I have sugar, I have water. Let’s share water. Let’s not make charity about it.’”
The Girl Who Smiled Beads is a beautifully written book about displacement, survival, and charity. I choose these three words carefully; each has a distinct place in Wamariya’s story. Clemantine Wamariya and her older sister Claire, were displaced form their middle-class home in Kigali, Rwanda at the start of the Rwandan Civil War (what many call the Rwandan Genocide, although after reading this book I understand Clemantine’s extreme aversion to this word). Together they traverse seven African countries, living various levels of survival, at refugee camps filled with lice, disease, death, and no food - sometimes finding a temporary home in Zaire where they had aunties and ate beautiful dishes. But they were always transitory, even when they both came to the US and Clemantine started schools, living with various charitable, rich white families.
Throughout most of the book, Clemantine is not a likable character. She doesn’t make herself one; she wasn’t one. Only six when she had to leave her happy, idyllic childhood, she is not made for the stark conditions of survival and constant fear - she despises it. It instills a deep-seated anger in her, an inability to trust or love anyone, even her sole protector, her sister Claire. She learns to grow suspicious of charity, she hustles and changes in her young life, her formative years spent with no real home, no sense of stability. When she comes to the U.S., she is treated like an object to be pitied and doted upon. She is invited to speak at events - even invited to be on Oprah’s show where she is reunited with her parents after 12+ years apart - yet this book is not the uplifting, inspirational, I-owe-it-all-to-those-who-helped-me book you may expect. Everyone is angry. Everyone feels betrayed, tired, frustrated, confused, and deprived (yes, even after moving to the U.S.).
Clemantine tells it all like it is, even if that truth is uncomfortable for first-world readers who have a certain image in mind of a story that should be told by a Rwandan refugee. Yay, it’s beautiful that she’s reunited with her family on national TV, that’s great! They to go Navy Pier and perform the rituals of tourists, they sit in Claire’s living room and perform as a family, but there’s too much distance. No one knows what to say. Clemantine doesn’t feel as though they are her parents; it’s all too much.
Clemantine is given a scholarship to study at the Hotchkiss School where she is intensely involved in extracurriculars and professors help her an impossible amount of time and attention. She hates it, she’s angry and lonely - she feels that she “has everything and did nothing” to earn it or work for it. She sits in a philosophy seminar where the professor asks a question: “You’re a ferry captain with two passengers. Your boat is sinking. One passenger is young and one is old. Who do you save?” Clemantine explodes: “Do you want to know what that’s really like? This is an abstract question to you?” She hears privileged New Englanders play thought experiments with her own personal history, and is asked to be a less emotional student. “I had not picked bugs out of my feet and watched my beaten sister nurse her baby while fleeing from one refugee camp to another to be lectured about human ethics by a man in corduroys.”
At times, this is a frustrating memoir to read, precisely because Wamariya’s story isn’t what you expect (Why do we expect this? What does that say about us?). You want her to thrive in the nice rich white lady’s house, you want her to blossom at Hotchkiss and Yale. She defies your desires. She has scars that are irreparable, expecting her to assimilate happily is selfish and facile.
As a privileged reader, it seems that when you have privilege, there’s nothing you can do to atone for it; charity is not the answer. But the passage above arrives about 2/3rds of the way through the book, and it strikes you. This is what she’s been saying the whole time, and it’s a simple premise - it centers around recognizing the value that each individual brings to the table. It’s not about what’s mine and what’s yours, it’s about sharing - even if there is enough for all of us to have our own.
The Girl Who Smiled Beads is a beautifully written book about displacement, survival, and charity. I choose these three words carefully; each has a distinct place in Wamariya’s story. Clemantine Wamariya and her older sister Claire, were displaced form their middle-class home in Kigali, Rwanda at the start of the Rwandan Civil War (what many call the Rwandan Genocide, although after reading this book I understand Clemantine’s extreme aversion to this word). Together they traverse seven African countries, living various levels of survival, at refugee camps filled with lice, disease, death, and no food - sometimes finding a temporary home in Zaire where they had aunties and ate beautiful dishes. But they were always transitory, even when they both came to the US and Clemantine started schools, living with various charitable, rich white families.
Throughout most of the book, Clemantine is not a likable character. She doesn’t make herself one; she wasn’t one. Only six when she had to leave her happy, idyllic childhood, she is not made for the stark conditions of survival and constant fear - she despises it. It instills a deep-seated anger in her, an inability to trust or love anyone, even her sole protector, her sister Claire. She learns to grow suspicious of charity, she hustles and changes in her young life, her formative years spent with no real home, no sense of stability. When she comes to the U.S., she is treated like an object to be pitied and doted upon. She is invited to speak at events - even invited to be on Oprah’s show where she is reunited with her parents after 12+ years apart - yet this book is not the uplifting, inspirational, I-owe-it-all-to-those-who-helped-me book you may expect. Everyone is angry. Everyone feels betrayed, tired, frustrated, confused, and deprived (yes, even after moving to the U.S.).
Clemantine tells it all like it is, even if that truth is uncomfortable for first-world readers who have a certain image in mind of a story that should be told by a Rwandan refugee. Yay, it’s beautiful that she’s reunited with her family on national TV, that’s great! They to go Navy Pier and perform the rituals of tourists, they sit in Claire’s living room and perform as a family, but there’s too much distance. No one knows what to say. Clemantine doesn’t feel as though they are her parents; it’s all too much.
Clemantine is given a scholarship to study at the Hotchkiss School where she is intensely involved in extracurriculars and professors help her an impossible amount of time and attention. She hates it, she’s angry and lonely - she feels that she “has everything and did nothing” to earn it or work for it. She sits in a philosophy seminar where the professor asks a question: “You’re a ferry captain with two passengers. Your boat is sinking. One passenger is young and one is old. Who do you save?” Clemantine explodes: “Do you want to know what that’s really like? This is an abstract question to you?” She hears privileged New Englanders play thought experiments with her own personal history, and is asked to be a less emotional student. “I had not picked bugs out of my feet and watched my beaten sister nurse her baby while fleeing from one refugee camp to another to be lectured about human ethics by a man in corduroys.”
At times, this is a frustrating memoir to read, precisely because Wamariya’s story isn’t what you expect (Why do we expect this? What does that say about us?). You want her to thrive in the nice rich white lady’s house, you want her to blossom at Hotchkiss and Yale. She defies your desires. She has scars that are irreparable, expecting her to assimilate happily is selfish and facile.
As a privileged reader, it seems that when you have privilege, there’s nothing you can do to atone for it; charity is not the answer. But the passage above arrives about 2/3rds of the way through the book, and it strikes you. This is what she’s been saying the whole time, and it’s a simple premise - it centers around recognizing the value that each individual brings to the table. It’s not about what’s mine and what’s yours, it’s about sharing - even if there is enough for all of us to have our own.