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A review by sonia_reppe
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya
5.0
Beautiful. Astonishing.
By the second chapter, I was completely immersed and riveted.
I am in awe of Wamariya's writing ability. Her retelling of her refugee experience in war-torn Africa is structured and told perfectly; her control of the language is masterful, nothing in here is superfluous. You will often hear me say that no book is perfect, (even the books I rate 5-stars have flaws that can be forgiven since they're overall a good read); but I am saying now that this is one of the rare books that is perfect. So, so powerful.
For a long time she had no words to describe what had happened to her. How can a person make sense of these horrors, the mind can’t process it. I see this theme in WWII memoirs a lot. Wamariya says trying to make sense of it was like trying to store a tornado in a chest of drawers. In America as a teenager, she has a visceral connection to Elie Weisel’s [b:Night|1617|Night (The Night Trilogy #1)|Elie Wiesel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1473495285s/1617.jpg|265616], and it is only then that she starts to have words to describe what she went through.
Before that, her reaction to the word Genocide on her eighth-grade vocabulary list: “I hated it immediately. I did not understand the point of the word genocide then…The word is tidy and efficient …It holds no true emotion…It is cool and sterile when it needs to be gruesome.”
In Lake Forest, Illinois, cared for by a foster family, she attends a top-rated high school after being a refugee for so long, (doesn’t know if her parents are alive), and then she attends Yale. The narrative swings from America to war-torn childhood effectively as she brings some perspective to her experiences she and her sister had in Africa. Her sister was amazingly resourceful. Wamayira is probably alive today because of her sister. Amazing, heart-wrenching story.
By the second chapter, I was completely immersed and riveted.
I am in awe of Wamariya's writing ability. Her retelling of her refugee experience in war-torn Africa is structured and told perfectly; her control of the language is masterful, nothing in here is superfluous. You will often hear me say that no book is perfect, (even the books I rate 5-stars have flaws that can be forgiven since they're overall a good read); but I am saying now that this is one of the rare books that is perfect. So, so powerful.
For a long time she had no words to describe what had happened to her. How can a person make sense of these horrors, the mind can’t process it. I see this theme in WWII memoirs a lot. Wamariya says trying to make sense of it was like trying to store a tornado in a chest of drawers. In America as a teenager, she has a visceral connection to Elie Weisel’s [b:Night|1617|Night (The Night Trilogy #1)|Elie Wiesel|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1473495285s/1617.jpg|265616], and it is only then that she starts to have words to describe what she went through.
Before that, her reaction to the word Genocide on her eighth-grade vocabulary list: “I hated it immediately. I did not understand the point of the word genocide then…The word is tidy and efficient …It holds no true emotion…It is cool and sterile when it needs to be gruesome.”
In Lake Forest, Illinois, cared for by a foster family, she attends a top-rated high school after being a refugee for so long, (doesn’t know if her parents are alive), and then she attends Yale. The narrative swings from America to war-torn childhood effectively as she brings some perspective to her experiences she and her sister had in Africa. Her sister was amazingly resourceful. Wamayira is probably alive today because of her sister. Amazing, heart-wrenching story.