The Girl Who Smiled Beads will go down as one of the best books I’ve read this year! Once I started reading it, I could not stop. This memoir of a girl who survived the Rwandan Civil War with her sister and ended up living a very different life in America was captivating.
Six year old Clementine lived a middle class life of relative comfort in Rwanda when the Civil War broke out and she and her sister began their long journey, not knowing what would happen to their family and where they would eventually end up.
She describes their journey of six years through the memories of a child trying to piece together a life that just doesn’t make sense. A life that no child should have to live. She and her sister moved from country to country and refugee camp to refugee camp in Africa in order to survive.
Because of her sister’s amazing resourcefulness they immigrated to the United States when Clementine was twelve years old. By that time her sister was a married adult with two children of her own. Clementine was taken in by an American family and was given many opportunities to flourish in a new life. She ultimately graduated from Yale University and she is an advocate for refugees and women around the world.
Clementine tells her story with raw honesty. She wrestles with the tragedies that she went through and survived as a child. And in this she struggles to come to terms with it all.
The title for this book came from a story that Clementine’s nanny told her when she was small. It is a story that took on great meaning for Clementine. I appreciated how she came back to this several times throughout the memoir.
The Girl Who Smiled Beads deals with themes of genocide, equality, family, survival and forgiveness.
I cannot recommend this book enough! It opened my eyes to a very real struggle. And it gave me so much to think about and process. So often the tragedies such as the genocide in Rwanda that we see on the news can seem to distant and foreign to us. We’re too far removed. But we must remember that there are real people behind each of these tragedies. Real people who feel real emotions. Real people who deserve so much better. Real people who have a story to tell.
I am thankful that I read Clementine’s story.
I received The Girl Who Smiled Beads as one of my picks from Book of the Month in April. I’m already looking forward to my May books to arrive!!!
I’ve read twenty-two books so far this year. I love reading and getting immersed in story, but I want to stretch myself to do more reviews of the books I’m reading. I have a new plan to review books here each Wednesday. I hope you’ll join me!!