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A review by das737
The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya
3.0
Described as a Rwandan war memoir, this memoir largely focuses on what happened to Wamariya after the war, including her time spent travelling across Sub-Saharan Africa in various refugee camps and eventually asylum in the United States. Notably, Wamariya ascended to prominence as a teen after being reuinted with her family on Oprah.
At times incisive, especially when Wamariya tears into her frustrations with the language used to describe "genocide" (scare quotes because she bristles against that very word, which I've avoided using in this review), too often, this book seems to be hiding an even more cutting book between the lines. Wamariya alludes to the discomfort, on an existential level, surrounding her Oprah appearance, including feelings of guilt, but does not delve too deeply into it, likely because the questioning this too extensively might reflect badly on Oprah and/or herself.
Worse yet, at times—perhaps because of, or worse, in spite of, her co-author—language that trivializes war creeps into the narrative: a messy, busy apartment is described as "a war zone," for instance, undercutting a powerful chapter about the effect of language in describing and potentially sanitizing violence. And while the memoir, like many others, engages with outside works—in this case, Toni Morrison, Elie Wiesel, and W.G. Sebald—the mentions of these authors are lip-service at best. In the case of Sebald, a facile reading undercuts the power and ambiguity of his work.
Most questionable of all was a brief nod towards Ayaan Hirsi Ali as writing formative work for her. Wamariya has every right to take solace in whatever she needs, and I can understand how she felt kinship in someone else who wrote about being the victim of misogynistic violence in Africa. But I'm not sure one can mention Hirsi Ali without noting her later allegiance with far-right, neo-fascist politicians and thinkers—the sort of people who, with too much power, could go on to perpetrate violence not unlike the violence that ravaged Wamariya's childhood, and whose actions have, one might argue, already exacerbated the refugee crisis.
At times incisive, especially when Wamariya tears into her frustrations with the language used to describe "genocide" (scare quotes because she bristles against that very word, which I've avoided using in this review), too often, this book seems to be hiding an even more cutting book between the lines. Wamariya alludes to the discomfort, on an existential level, surrounding her Oprah appearance, including feelings of guilt, but does not delve too deeply into it, likely because the questioning this too extensively might reflect badly on Oprah and/or herself.
Worse yet, at times—perhaps because of, or worse, in spite of, her co-author—language that trivializes war creeps into the narrative: a messy, busy apartment is described as "a war zone," for instance, undercutting a powerful chapter about the effect of language in describing and potentially sanitizing violence. And while the memoir, like many others, engages with outside works—in this case, Toni Morrison, Elie Wiesel, and W.G. Sebald—the mentions of these authors are lip-service at best. In the case of Sebald, a facile reading undercuts the power and ambiguity of his work.
Most questionable of all was a brief nod towards Ayaan Hirsi Ali as writing formative work for her. Wamariya has every right to take solace in whatever she needs, and I can understand how she felt kinship in someone else who wrote about being the victim of misogynistic violence in Africa. But I'm not sure one can mention Hirsi Ali without noting her later allegiance with far-right, neo-fascist politicians and thinkers—the sort of people who, with too much power, could go on to perpetrate violence not unlike the violence that ravaged Wamariya's childhood, and whose actions have, one might argue, already exacerbated the refugee crisis.