The Girl Who Smiled Beads
A review of

The Girl Who Smiled Beads

A Story of War and What Comes After

Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil • Crown • 2018

A Refugee’s Survival and Triumph

by David Meyer

Human rights advocate Clemantine Wamariya details her upbringing amid the horrors of genocide and her slow, painful escape from trauma.

Human rights advocate and public speaker Clemantine Wamariya was an inquisitive child who loved playing with her older brother and pestering her older sister Claire. Then one day, her life changed forever. She and Claire fled as war, murder, betrayal and madness exploded around them.

Writing with award-winning New York Times Magazine journalist Elizabeth Weil, Wamariya tells of her struggles to survive the Rwandan genocide. She offers a deeply personal memoir about human nature amid the pressures of war, poverty and homelessness.

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