Immaculee Ilibagiza shares her story in Left to Tell: One Woman's Story of Surviving the Rwandan Holocaust. She grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee's family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans. Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love — a love so strong she was able to seek out and forgive her family's killers. The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman's journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch is nonfiction. In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the war in Rwanda, a vivid history of the tragedy's background, and an unforgettable account of its aftermath. One of the most acclaimed books of the year, this account will endure as a chilling document of our time.__________
A review of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families can be found at SmallWorld Reads.
4 comments:
Thanks, Amy, for these two titles for Rwanda. While reading a comment about one of them, I learned about Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey. I hadn't realized her research on gorillas took place in Rwanda as well as the Congo, so this is another book for our list.
I highly recommend "We wish to inform you..." if you're looking for a good overview of what happened in Rwanda. It's not for the faint of heart by any means.
If you're interested in Dian Fossey I'd like to recommend "Woman in the Mist" by Canadian Author Farley Mowat. It's an account of Dian Fossey life that includes a long section on her work with the gorillas and on attempts to solve her murder.
cbjames
http://www.readywhenyouarecb.blogspot.com
You're welcome Bonnie. All of the titles look you have mentioned look interesting.
Here's my review of We Wish to Inform You...:
http://smallworldreads.blogspot.com/2008/04/we-wish-to-inform-you-that-tomorrow-we.html
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