The Girl Who Smiled Beads

The Girl Who Smiled Beads is the memoir of a Rwandan refugee who spent six years in various refugee camps before making her way to America with her sister, niece, and nephew. Clemantine left her home and family behind before she had any concept of war or genocide or any of the things she was running from or the reasons people wanted her dead. Traveling with only her sister from camp to camp, she became incredibly tough in order to survive. And when she finally made it to safety in America, it took a long time for her to make her way back to normalcy.

The book alternates chapters between her time in camps in various African countries and her time in America, learning to trust her safety and stability. It's a very stark account of her experience, and it's clear that Clemantine herself is still processing a lot of what she went through. She became a sort of poster child for Rwandan refugees in America and has been doing what she can to shed light on her experience while also coming to terms with her legacy and fighting against an image of being particularly special or strong. The book is short, but there's a lot to unpack in her experience and her reaction to it.

Most interesting of all is her relationship with her older sister. This is the relationship on which the whole book turns. The two of them work together and always look out for each other. They refuse to leave each other behind, even though sometimes they don't like each other very much and they often don't understand what the other is thinking or doing. It's a fraught relationship but an impressive example of the strength of family in the face of everything.

I'm honestly still grappling with this book a bit, and I probably will be for a good long while. Clemantine's experiences are so incredibly different from my own that I was shocked every time I was reminded that we're nearly the same age. But hard as it was to read this book, it's an important one. Especially because it serves as a reminder that these atrocities continue to happen right now.

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