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Summary
Summary
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The plot provided by the universe was filled with starvation, war and rape. I would not--could not--live in that tale."
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety--perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted refugee status in the United States; there, in Chicago, their lives diverged. Though their bond remained unbreakable, Claire, who had for so long protected and provided for Clemantine, was a single mother struggling to make ends meet, while Clemantine was taken in by a family who raised her as their own. She seemed to live the American dream: attending private school, taking up cheerleading, and, ultimately, graduating from Yale. Yet the years of being treated as less than human, of going hungry and seeing death, could not be erased. She felt at the same time six years old and one hundred years old.
In The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Clemantine provokes us to look beyond the label of "victim" and recognize the power of the imagination to transcend even the most profound injuries and aftershocks. Devastating yet beautiful, and bracingly original, it is a powerful testament to her commitment to constructing a life on her own terms.
Author Notes
Clemantine Wamariya is a storyteller and human rights advocate. Born in Kigali, Rwanda, displaced by conflict, Clemantine migrated throughout seven African countries as a child. At age twelve, she was granted refugee status in the United States and went on to receive a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University. She lives in San Francisco.
Elizabeth Weil is a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine , a contributing editor to Outside magazine, and writes frequently for Vogue and other publications. She is the recipient of a New York Press Club Award for her feature reporting, a Lowell Thomas Award for her travel writing, and a GLAAD Award for her coverage of LGBT issues. In addition, her work has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award, a James Beard Award, and a Dart Award for coverage of trauma. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two daughters.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Miles's nuanced, emotional reading makes listening to Wamariya's haunting life story an unforgettable experience. As a six-year-old child in Rwanda, Wamariya and her older sister, Claire, were forced to flee the Rwandan massacre without their parents. The sisters struggled to survive on their own for six years as they traveled through seven African countries, endured horrific refugee camps, and found brief periods of safety staying with distant relatives-only to have the war and violence descend on them, too. Finally the two make it to America and settle in Chicago where a family takes in Wamariya and provides for her, while her sister struggles as a single mother. The audio edition concludes with recorded commentary by Wamariya, giving listeners the opportunity to hear the author's voice, but the main narrative is read by veteran voice actor Miles who fully embraces the role of Wamariya and easily enthralls listeners. Miles's voice alternates between calmness, fear, anxiety, rage, and contemplativeness, as she sifts through Wamariya's memories and helps convey the author's complicated emotions. The sterling narration makes for a powerful audiobook. A Crown hardcover. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Wamariya was only six years old in 1994, when massacres obliterated her home life in Rwanda. With her older sister, Claire, Wamariya escaped and became a perpetual refugee. The sisters spent the next six years moving around Africa, Claire always making sure that they never got too comfortable in their transient circumstances. After living in seven different countries, the girls were granted asylum to the U.S. When they arrived in Chicago, they had no idea whether their parents were alive or slaughtered. Eventually, they adjusted to their American lives; Wamariya excelled in school, and Claire reared her small children. In 2006, the sisters were featured on the Oprah show, wherein their parents were brought onstage as a Winfrey-style surprise. The book, coauthored with journalist Weil, demystifies life during and after the Rwandan Civil War and explores the difficult reality of such an epic familial reunion. In her prose as in her life, Wamariya is brave, intelligent, and generous. Sliding easily between past and present, this memoir is a soulful, searing story about how families survive.--Eathorne, Courtney Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
LAST STORIES, by William Trevor. (Viking, $26.) The great Irish writer, who died in 2016 at the age of 88, captured turning points in individual lives with powerful slyness. This seemingly quiet but ultimately volcanic collection is his final gift to us, and it is filled with plots sprung from human feeling. FASCISM: A Warning, by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Albright draws on her long experience in government service and as an educator to warn about a new rise of fascism around the world. She is hopeful that this threat can be overcome, but only, she says, if we recognize history's lessons and never take democracy for granted. MOTHERHOOD, by Sheila Heti. (Holt, $27.) The narrator of Heti's provocative new novel, a childless writer in her late 30s - like Heti herself - is preoccupied with a single question: whether to have a child. Her dilemma prompts her to consult friends, psychics, her conscience and a version of the I Ching. INTO THE RAGING SEA: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of the El Faro, by Rachel Slade. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Pieced together from texts, emails and black box recordings, this is a tense, moment-by-moment account of the 2015 sinking of the cargo ship El Faro during Hurricane Joaquin. SEE WHAT CAN BE DONE: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary, by Lorrie Moore. (Knopf, $29.95.) The first essay collection by this gifted fiction writer features incisive pieces about topics like Alice Munro, John Cheever, "The Wire," Dawn Powell and Don DeLillo, all of it subject to Moore's usual loving attention and quirky perspective. CAN DEMOCRACY SURVIVE GLOBAL CAPITALISM? by Robert Kuttner. (Norton, $27.95.) Kuttner returns to the argument he's been making with increasing alarm for the past three decades: Countries need to have autonomy to control their economies, otherwise they'll be crushed by the whims of the free market. THE GIRL WHO SMILED BEADS: A Story Of War and What Comes After, by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil. (Crown, $26.) As a 6-year-old refugee of the Rwandan genocide, Wamariya crisscrossed Africa with her sister, enduring poverty and violence. She recounts her path to America lyrically and analytically. AND NOW WE HAVE EVERYTHING: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready, by Meaghan O'Connell. (Little, Brown, $26.) This honest, neurotic, searingly funny memoir of pregnancy and childbirth is a welcome antidote in the panicked-expectant-mothers canon - though its gripping narrative will appeal to nonparents, too. WHITE HOUSES, by Amy Bloom. (Random House, $27.) A psychologically astute novel that celebrates the intimate relationship of Eleanor Roosevelt and the A.P. reporter Lorena Hickok. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Kirkus Review
Record of a childhood in flight from war and terror."I hated that I had to eat," writes Wamariya. "I hated my stomach, I hated my needs." Growing children are always hungry, but the author, forced at the age of 6 to flee her native Rwanda during the genocide of 1994, was for years as a refugee never able to satisfy those elemental needs. Intercut with her chronicle of experiences in a series of refugee camps are moments from her new life in America, where she landed at the age of 12, adopted into a welcoming home in a bit of fortune that she did not trust: "I was callous and cynical….I thought I could fool people into thinking that I was not profoundly bruised." She had reason to worry, for on a six-year trail that passed through one African nation after another, she witnessed both generosity and depravity coupled with the constant worry that the older sister with whom she had fled would decide that she was too much of a burden and abandon her. She did not: Her sister's presence through one fraught situation after another is a constant. Wamariya's experiences adjusting to life in a country where, her sister declared, beer flowed from faucets and people owned six cars at a time are affecting, and there are some Cinderella moments in it, from being accepted to Yale to appearing on Oprah Winfrey's show. But more, there are moments of potent self-reckoning; being a victim of trauma means that "you, as a person, are empty and flattened, and that violence, that theft, keeps you from embodying a life that feels like your own." The work of finding home and feeling safe--it's something that every foe of immigration ought to ponder; in that alone Wamariya's narrative is valuable.Not quite as attention-getting as memoirs by Ismail Beah or Scholastique Mukasonga, but a powerful record of the refugee experience all the same.
Library Journal Review
Wamariya and Weil tell vividly the story of how six-year-old Clemantine fled from the Rwandan massacre with her 15-year-old sister. The siblings then traveled through seven African countries in six years. They did what they could to survive and find a place where they felt safe and secure and discovered a sense of belonging. The memoir Wamariya and Weil tell nonlinear. They go back and forth between Wamariya's early story of survival in Africa and the later tale of her success in the United States, after the sisters were granted entry as refugees. The weaving of the disparate events in time helps illustrate the intricate fabric of Wamariya's life. Robin Miles's steady narration, with no variation in her voice to differentiate among the time periods, helps show the inter-connectedness of the events that made -Wamariya who she is today. Wamariya and Weil share a memorable story. The images they paint from Wamariya's early life are haunting and powerful; the images from her later life leave listeners hopeful. VERDICT A must-listen audiobook for those with an interest in memoirs. ["This beautifully written and touching account goes beyond the horror of war to recall the lived experience of a child trying to make sense of violence and strife. Intimate and lyrical, the narrative flows from Wamariya's early experience to her life in the United States with equal grace": LJ 3/15/18 starred review of the Crown hc.]-Gladys Alcedo, Wallingford, CT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.