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Summary
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
Clemantine Wamariya meets her sister Claire at her apartment in 2006 the night before they appear on the Oprah show. Claire lives outside of Chicago with her kids, Mariette, Freddy, and Michele. Clemantine is a junior in High School and lives during the week with the Thomas family in a wealthy suburb. She is a normal teenager who plays sports and goes to church. Claire, who was older when they arrived in the United States from Africa, works full-time as a hotel maid.
The Prologue sets the stage in contemporary American society. Clemantine Wamariya—the author of The Girl Who Smiled Beads—first introduces herself as the character she is in American society: a refugee and survivor of the Rwandan Genocide. Her memoir will go on to expand and give the true story behind this somewhat simplistic view of who she is.
Themes
A limo arrives and takes Claire and Clemantine to a fancy hotel in downtown Chicago. Clemantine is excited. The Oprah show tomorrow night is the follow-up to an episode in which Oprah and Elie Wiesel visit Auschwitz. Mrs. Thomas had encouraged Clemantine to write an essay on Elie Wiesel’s book Night—about surviving the Holocaust—for Oprah’s essay contest. Clemantine wrote about the Rwandan Genocide and was one of 50 winners.
In the limo, Clemantine and Claire try to talk about what happened to them, but they’ve tried so hard to forget that they don’t know how. At the hotel, they order room service, and wake at four a.m. to get dressed. The next day, they sit in front of Oprah and Elie Wiesel. They watch a video of Oprah and Elie walking through Auschwitz, then Oprah congratulates all the essay winners except Clemantine. Privately, Clemantine remembers when she spent Christmas in a refugee camp in Burundi playing with pencils she’d hidden.
Although Oprah acknowledges Clemantine’s experience, Clemantine still feels unrecognized and somewhat silenced in American society. She and Claire are unable to talk about their past, and Clemantine is constantly plagued with her memories of loneliness. This shows that, although she has been a refugee for years, Clemantine’s trauma has instilled seemingly ineradicable feelings in her.
Themes
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Oprah asks Clemantine if she found her parents before leaving Africa. Clemantine explains that she hasn’t seen them since 1994, when she was six. Oprah says she has a letter from her parents and invites Clemantine and Claire on stage. Claire’s face is stern. Even though she’s had a hard life, she never believes anyone is better than her. Clemantine feels that her past is only fragments, and wonders if she’ll ever not feel lost inside. Oprah hands Clemantine a letter. Before she can open it, Oprah stops her and says that she doesn’t have to read it because her family is here.
This scene on the Oprah stage juxtaposes the external motions of life with Clemantine’s inner state. Clemantine acts out normalcy, but inside she feels shattered. Moreover, she feels that she is alone in being broken inside, even beside Claire. She sees that Claire has an unbreakable strength but that she herself always feels fragmented. What Clemantine wants most of all is to feel whole.
Themes
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The doors open and Clemantine’s mother, father, brother, and two sisters walk out. Clemantine last saw her sister Claudette when Claudette was 2. She’s never met her other siblings. Clemantine dreamed of this moment for years. She remembers writing her name in the dust in Malawi hoping her mother would see it. She also remembers collecting marbles in Tanzania for her brother Pudi, who is dead. She hugs her family. She forgets she’s on TV but is aware that the audience is crying.
The reunion of Clemantine’s family brings the audience to tears. It is an emotional scene of an estranged family finding their way back to each other. Like the audience, Clemantine herself is caught up in this magical fulfillment of her greatest wish, but her family is not the same family she left when she was six: she has siblings she’s never met before, and her brother Pudi is gone.
Themes
After the show, Clemantine and her family take a limo to Claire’s apartment. Nobody talks. Clemantine’s mother fidgets restlessly, and her father smiles like he’s still on camera. Clemantine feels that her siblings are a fictional representation of the perfect life she could’ve had. That weekend, the family goes to the Botanical Garden and the Navy Pier. Clemantine’s parents are like ghosts, and everything is awkward. Clemantine feels grateful but also like she’s the victim of a horrible experiment. On Monday, her family flies back to Rwanda, and Mrs. Thomas takes Clemantine to school as usual.
Once the Oprah show is over, the magical glow that surrounded the estranged family’s reunion disappears. To Clemantine, her family members seem like ghosts. Her family as she knew it died long ago when she left Rwanda. She also feels that the child she used to be to her parents has been erased by her new siblings. The awkward reality of the estranged family’s reunion shows that the family’s traumatic separation can never fully be undone.
Themes
