A review by karnaconverse
Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by Immaculée Ilibagiza

4.0

Immaculee Ilibagiza, and six other Tutsi women hid from Hutu killers for three months during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Immaculee credits God for giving her the strength to survive and writes of her ongoing conversation with God and the dreams she had during her time in the bathroom. Her parents and two of her three brothers were killed during the massacre. In addition to training her thoughts on God, Immaculee teaches herself English which comes in handy when, after rescued, she applies for work with the United Nations. The gruesome details of how her Hutu neighbors used machetes to kill the Tutsi neighbors they'd lived beside for generations and the looting and destruction of property are difficult to imagine but necessary to fully understand what happened in this small, central African country. Her surviving brother (and family) lives in Rwanda; she (and her family) lives in New York City.

I read this because it is the 2012 University Seminar Summer Read for Buena Vista University (Iowa), the university my husband is affiliated with. Immaculee will speak on campus in September.