The Girl Who Smiled Beads

What a captivating and thought-provoking memoir. Clemantine tells the harrowing story of her 7 year long journey of escaping the war in Rwanda together with her strong and resourceful sister Claire. In parallel we learn about her arrival in the US and the hardness of what it means to reacquaint yourself with a life of safety. How charity - the economy of givers and takers, saviours and saved - establishes a degrading hierarchy. How anger and trauma go hand in hand, and how families that have been torn apart don't just automatically heal.