Will I love The Girl Who Smiled Beads?

How do you build a life on your own terms when you have been treated as less than human for years? Clemantine’s commitment and resilience to do exactly that made me fall in love with her book.

Clemantine’s story carried me from the unimaginable terror she endured as a six-year-old in Rwanda to the seemingly stable, even privileged life she carved out in the U.S. as a young adult.

Yet beneath that stability was a palpable restlessness, a search for who she truly was and where she belonged. I was right beside her as she grappled with her past, present,… show more.

This novel about a girl’s flight from Rwanda is gripping.

She vividly captures how perceptions of risk are radically altered by war, how grief and trauma may take years to fully understand, and why we should not pity survivors but respect their strength. These are lessons I learned firsthand as a result of my research in Ukraine and that I also describe, in an expository style.

An important theme in this book, and one I explore at length in my own, is that once separated by politics or geography, family and friendships are difficult to re-knit. A lesson from the… show more.