Binding: Paperback
Description: 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.
Title: Girl Who Smiled Beads
Author(s): Weil Elizabeth
Publisher: Crown
Barcode: 9780451495334
Language: English
Publication Date: 4/2/2019