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A review by zoemig
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya
4.0
The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya (co-written with Elizabeth Weil) is an incredible true story of survival. Wamariya was six years old when she and her older sister fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years wandering through seven African countries, searching for safety, not knowing what had happened to their family, before finally being granted asylum in the United States.
Rather than being a detailed non-fiction account of precisely all the events that occurred, The Girl Who Smiled Beads is a memoir about the human experience and what it was like to live through the things she did. Wamariya's voice is so powerful, and the audiobook, which I listened to, has excellent narration by Robin Miles as well as a bonus discussion by Wamariya at the end. My only complaint was that I found the timeline difficult to follow, especially on audiobook (my hard copy has the year at the beginning of each chapter, but the audio narration did not). The Girl Who Smiled Beads is at once honest, emotional, passionate, and inspiring. Wamariya's story will definitely stick with me.
Rather than being a detailed non-fiction account of precisely all the events that occurred, The Girl Who Smiled Beads is a memoir about the human experience and what it was like to live through the things she did. Wamariya's voice is so powerful, and the audiobook, which I listened to, has excellent narration by Robin Miles as well as a bonus discussion by Wamariya at the end. My only complaint was that I found the timeline difficult to follow, especially on audiobook (my hard copy has the year at the beginning of each chapter, but the audio narration did not). The Girl Who Smiled Beads is at once honest, emotional, passionate, and inspiring. Wamariya's story will definitely stick with me.