The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

Wamariya, Clemantine; Weil, Elizabeth

ISBN 10: 0525526285 ISBN 13: 9780525526285

Publisher: Random House, 2018

Synopsis

A 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.

About this title

Review

"Extraordinary and heartrending. Wamariya is as fiercely talented as she is courageous" (Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao)

"Clemantine Wamariya has written a defining, luminescent memoir that shines a sharp light on the dark forces that roil our age . . . Her gripping and brutally honest reflections inspire us to count our blessings and summon us to follow her fierce and unrelenting example to try to help build the world we wish to see" (Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell)

"A riveting story and one that, somehow, gives hope too" (Stylist, Spring Picks)

"A touching tale of sorrow and hope, of the worst and the best of mankind" (I-M Magazine)

"A powerful memoir" (Emerald Street)

"Extraordinary and heartrending. Wamariya is as fiercely talented as she is courageous"

"Clemantine Wamariya has written a defining, luminescent memoir that shines a sharp light on the dark forces that roil our age . . . Her gripping and brutally honest reflections inspire us to count our blessings and summon us to follow her fierce and unrelenting example to try to help build the world we wish to see"

"A riveting story and one that, somehow, gives hope too"

"A touching tale of sorrow and hope, of the worst and the best of mankind"

"A powerful memoir"

Book Description

A riveting story of dislocation, survival, and the power of stories to break or save us

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0525526285
• ISBN 13: 9780525526285
• Binding: Audio CD