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Clemantine’s Grandmother
Mukamana is Clemantine’s nanny when she is a young girl in Rwanda. Clemantine always asks Mukamana to tell her stories that explain how the world works. Often, Mukamana tells Clemantine the story of a magical girl who wandered the earth and smiled a trail of beads. She always let Clemantine choose the ending to this open-ended story. One day, Mukamana mysteriously disappears. When Clemantine asks her mother, her mother says Mukamana’s disappearance was because of the conflict in Rwanda. Much later, Clemantine returns to Mukamana’s story of the girl who smiled beads to make sense of her own life.
Mukamana Quotes in The Girl Who Smiled Beads
The The Girl Who Smiled Beads quotes below are all either spoken by Mukamana or refer to Mukamana. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 16
Quotes
The plot provided by the universe was filled with starvation, war, and rape. I would not—could not—live in that tale.
Instead, I would be the girl who smiled beads, my version of the girl who smiled beads, one who had power and agency over her life, one who did not get caught.
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Chapter 21
Quotes
I had only a character, a rubric. The girl who smiled beads gave me a way to go through the world […] but I was still looking for a narrative that felt coherent and complete. […] I still, still, after everything […] longed for Mukamana. I wanted her to sit on the side of my bed, talk to me, and make my world feel not just magnificent but logical and whole.
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Mukamana Quotes in The Girl Who Smiled Beads
The The Girl Who Smiled Beads quotes below are all either spoken by Mukamana or refer to Mukamana. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 16
Quotes
The plot provided by the universe was filled with starvation, war, and rape. I would not—could not—live in that tale.
Instead, I would be the girl who smiled beads, my version of the girl who smiled beads, one who had power and agency over her life, one who did not get caught.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21
Quotes
I had only a character, a rubric. The girl who smiled beads gave me a way to go through the world […] but I was still looking for a narrative that felt coherent and complete. […] I still, still, after everything […] longed for Mukamana. I wanted her to sit on the side of my bed, talk to me, and make my world feel not just magnificent but logical and whole.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
