The Girl Who Smiled Beads Themes

Set largely during the Rwandan Genocide, The Girl Who Smiled Beads depicts a trauma that tragically altered the way people conceive of the world. Clemantine is six years old when the Rwanda Genocide breaks out and she suddenly becomes a refugee. At such a young age, the horrors she witnesses—hunger, degrading comments, bombs exploding, dead bodies floating in a river—seem to her like illogical, evil acts that she can’t wrap her head around. When…

As a refugee of the Rwandan Genocide, Clemantine Wamariya—the author of The Girl Who Smiled Beads—longs for a coherent narrative of her own life. When she’s forced to suddenly leave her home in Rwanda and spend the next six years as a refugee, her life ceases to follow a linear path. She tries to combat the loss of time, place, and memories by collecting keepsakes: rocks from each place she and her…

The Girl Who Smiled Beads is a story about war, but it specifically focuses on what it’s like to experience and escape such violent trauma as a woman. From the moment that Clemantine and her older sister Claire flee Rwanda, they are alone as refugees for six years. Both women learn to survive starvation, homelessness, and degradation. Claire makes money however she can, dressing well and learning the local language so she can barter with…

Throughout The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Clemantine Wamariya critiques society’s charity toward refugees and survivors. When Clemantine arrives in the United States after years of being a refugee in war-torn Africa, she is appalled by the extent to which most American families live in excess. While gawking at her host family’s well-stocked fridge, she wonders how it is possible that one part of the world has so little while another part has so much…