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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl Who Smiled Beads, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Faith
Narrative, Memory, and Fragmentation
Displacement and Identity
Women, War, and Survival
Charity vs. Sharing
Summary
Analysis
In the United States, Clemantine is given an assignment for her 11th grade improv class: introduce herself using two objects. Out of pity, Clemantine’s teachers cast her in lots of plays, but her acting is flat and mechanical. When she walks on stage with her objects, she doesn’t know what to do. Who is she? Inside her backpack, she has a picture of Mariette and Freddy standing in front of their first apartment in Chicago, their eyes empty, and a lavender sachet pillow that Mrs. Thomas gave her to help her sleep. She lies down on the prop bed with her head on the pillow, looking at the picture.
Clemantine’s backpack of important objects for the improv class is reminiscent of the Mickey Mouse backpack she lost on the bus in Mozambique. When she lost that backpack, she lost the few objects that defined who she was and where she came from. Now, years later, she can’t think of any objects that truly define her; she doesn’t know who she is. This shows that the loss of the Mickey Mouse backpack signifies the broader loss of her sense of self.
Themes
Suddenly, Clemantine’s anger erupts. She rips the sheets off the bed and dials Rob on her cellphone. She leaves him a message, screaming that he was supposed to protect her family from terror but didn’t. She screams that she can forgive him, but she’ll never trust another person again. She sobs until she’s escorted offstage. Afterwards, her classmates avoid her.
Clemantine’s explosion reveals that Rob is a huge part of why she feels incapable of trusting other people. When Clemantine was very young, Rob was one of her elders. He scared her and abused Claire in front of her, leading Clemantine to fear the very people who are supposed to protect her.
Themes
By the time Clemantine writes her essay for Oprah’s contest, she knows her parents are alive. One day, at World Relief (the organization that brought Clemantine and Claire to the United States), Claire meets a woman who knew her and Clemantine’s uncle. Claire gets the phone number of their uncle, who’s now a priest in Rwanda. When Claire calls and tells him who she is, he doesn’t believe her at first. He thought she and Clemantine had died. He tells Claire that their parents are still in Kigali with Pudi, but they’ve lost their money and have no phone. He arranges for an aunt to visit the family with a phone the next day so Clemantine and Claire can call.
Clemantine and Claire. traveled through six countries before immigrating to the United States, and Clemantine looked for her family in every town they stopped in. Suddenly, after making one small connection, she and Claire finally have the chance to talk to their parents. There is something surreal about the sudden discovery that they can call their parents. Their parents also believed that Clemantine and Claire had died, suggesting that the phone call will feel like a conversation between ghosts.
Themes
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The next day, Clemantine skips school and goes to Claire’s. She hates Claire’s apartment because Rob is there. Rob cheats on Claire, beats her, and makes her feel worthless. Claire calls her mother. Clemantine walks out of the room, unable to bear hearing Claire and her mother talk like strangers. Claire lies that she’s married a nice man. With horror, Clemantine feels she’s lost what her family meant to her. They are all as good as dead. She decides she’ll never tell her mother anything.
Clemantine wishes that reuniting with her family had remained a dream. When it was only a dream, Clemantine could pretend that she and her family were the same people they had been when they were separated. Now, she realizes that they’ve all changed irrevocably, which is why they end up speaking to each other as if they’re strangers.
Themes
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