The Girl Who Smiled Beads Book Summary

In 'The Girl Who Smiled Beads', Clemantine Wamariya takes readers on an extraordinary journey of survival and resilience, as she recounts her escape from the Rwandan genocide. Separated from her family, she navigates a treacherous path through displacement and refugee camps, all while maintaining her hope and spirit. The poignant narrative intertwines her personal story with broader themes of identity and belonging. Wamariya's reflections on trauma and healing are both haunting and inspiring, revealing the power of love and tenacity. This memoir is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the complexities of human endurance amid the darkest of times.

By Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil

Published: 2019

""We carry the stories of our past like beads on a string, beautiful yet heavy, each one telling a tale of resilience, survival, and the unyielding spirit of a girl turned woman.""

Book Review of The Girl Who Smiled Beads

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.

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"We carry the stories of our past like beads on a string, beautiful yet heavy, each one telling a tale of resilience, survival, and the unyielding spirit of a girl turned woman."

The Girl Who Smiled Beads

By Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil