The word genocide is clinical, overly general, bloodless and dehumanising. "Oh, its like that holocaust?" people would say to me - say to me still.
To this day I do not know how to respond and be polite.
No, I want to scream, it's not like the Holocaust. Or the killing fields in Cambodia. Or ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. There's no catchall term that proves you understand.
There's no label to peel and stick that absolves you, shows you've done your duty, you've completed the moral project of remembering.
This - Rwanda, my life - is different, specific, personal tragedy, just as each of those horrors was a different, specific, personal tragedy and inside all those tidily tabled boxes are 6 million, or 1.7 million or 100,000 or 100 billion lives destroyed.
You cannot line up the atrocities like a matching set.
You cannot bear witness with a single word.

This book is a must read, in my option.

It tells you a part of history in such a honest and real way, takes you to the nice days before the bad days started, takes you through the horrible life of having to leave everything -your family, home and everything that gives you comfort- behind in seconds, and leaving you with the only human instinct: Survival.

This book takes you on a journey.

Its not necessarily a good one, but an important one none the less.

Its not a good one because its so honest.

It really talks about the good, the bad and everything in between that humanity has to offer.

It shows us that even those that try to help can sometimes to a lot of harm.
Be it with words or actions or expectations.
No matter how much good intention they have or how well they are meaning it, this book really shows us that if you haven't lived it, you don't understand.
And thats not a bad thing!
Everyones story is unique (which the book also clearly stats and its so TRUE! and i loved that it was so focused on saying "this is my story, this is just one story of what happened in Rwanda, not THE story!") and while some people might better understand what others go through or survived through... nobody really understand if you where there.

And even if you where there, lived through the same, its still your own unique story.

In the book itself Clemantine talks about her experience and later on mentions that her sister always tells the same story differently. So even thought both of them lived through the same days, through the same events, they remember it completely differently.

And that i just how life is.

Which might sound depressing, but i think that is what makes us all so unique and that is what we all have to remember.

Everyone has a story to tell, and especially those that survived through horrendous humanity caused tragedies have to tell theirs, to remind everyone what is at stake, what could be happening, what has happened and that we all have to work together to not let it happen again or let it continue.


READ THIS BOOK.

And be swapped away into a horrendous, tragic, beautiful life story that makes you think, makes you connect and understand while also starting to question things.

READ IT and LEARN!

*Thanks to Netgalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a free e-copy of this book in exchange for a free and honest review!*