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Yolande Mukagasana is a Rwandan nurse and mother of three children who likes wearing jeans and designer glasses. She runs her own clinic in Nyamirambo and is planning a party for her wedding anniversary. But when genocide starts everything changes. Targeted because she’s a successful woman and a Tutsi, she flees for her life. This gripping memoir describes the betrayal of friends and help that comes from surprising places. Quick-witted and courageous, Yolande never loses hope she will find her children alive. "This book was one of the first literary testimonies that I read in French about Rwanda. I found it profoundly moving — both realistic and introspective. Thanks to this beautiful translation, it is at long last available to the English-speaking public." Véronique Tadjo "Reading Yolande Mukagasana’s book in French at the age of fifteen changed my life. I realized that genocide is not a mass crime but a single murder repeated hundreds of thousands of times. With this testimony the genocide is no longer just a historical event, it is instead the story of a woman, a mother, a Tutsi. And this is what makes Yolande’s account universal." Gaël Faye
Writing and Filming the Genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda: Dismembering and Remembering Traumatic History is an innovative work in Francophone and African studies that examines a wide range of responses to the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. From survivor testimonies, to novels by African authors, to films such as Hotel Rwanda and Sometimes in April, the arts of witnessing are varied, comprehensive, and compelling. Alexandre Dauge-Roth compares the specific potential and the limits of each medium to craft unique responses to the genocide and instill in us its haunting legacy. In the wake of genocide, urgent questions arise: How do survivors both claim their shared humanity and speak the radically personal and violent experience of their past? How do authors and filmmakers make inconceivable trauma accessible to a society that will always remain foreign to their experience? How are we transformed by the genocide through these various modes of listening, viewing, and reading?
Along with nine other African Writers, Veronique Tadjo was invited to visit Rwanda to bear witness to the genocide that took place in 1994 - wiping out one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus during a hundred days of barbaric violence.
Navigate the darkest corridors of humanity with Machete Season–a harrowing saga that dusts off the grim truths of the Rwandan Genocide. Rewind to April-May 1994, as the Tutsis face the unimaginable horror of annihilation under their fellow Hutu's brutal reign. The author, Jean Hatzfeld, painstakingly pieces together the chilling accounts shared by nine Hutu executioners. Recounted are not just tales of horror, but a frightening display of the dehumanizing banality of evil. This revelation doubles as a probing exploration of the mechanisms of mass murders and their remorseless orchestrators. Delve into their candid confessions about the dreadful slaughter of approximately 50,000 Tutsis, the...
An analysis of literary accounts of suffering from sub-Saharan Africa, this book examines fiction and life-writing in English and French over the last forty years. Drawing on writers from the canonical to the less well-known, it uses close readings to examine the personal, social and political consequences of representing pain in literature.
One of the most powerful Islamic militant groups in Africa, Al-Shabaab exerts Taliban-like rule over millions in Somalia and poses a growing threat to stability in the Horn of Africa. Somalis risk retaliation or death if they oppose or fail to comply with Al-Shabaab-imposed restrictions on aspects of everyday life such as clothing, media, sports, interpersonal relations, and prayer. Inside Al-Shabaab: The Secret History of Al-Qaeda's Most Powerful Ally recounts the rise, fall, and resurgence of this overlooked terrorist organization and provides an intimate understanding of its connections with Al-Qaeda. Drawing from interviews with former Al-Shabaab militants, including high-ranking officia...
What can we do to prevent more atrocities from happening in the future, and to stop the ones that are happening right now? That the World May Know tells the powerful and moving story of the successes and failures of the modern human rights movement. Drawing on firsthand accounts from fieldworkers around the world, the book gives a painfully clear picture of the human cost of confronting inhumanity in our day.
K.M.R Smythe grew up in Rhodesia Her family lived in the grounds of Ingutsheni Mental Hospital in Bulawayo from 1953-1971 where her father worked as a psychiatrist. As a child she grappled with many frightening situations and found strength and self-belief by becoming a successful tennis player. The Secret World of Shlomo Fine is an exploration of concealment and prejudice on many different levels. It is a story about an isolated and isolating experience inside one of the largest lunatic asylums built during British colonial rule in Africa. The book raises questions about the role that psychiatry holds in the Western imagination as accepted wisdom for healing human distress. What took place at Ingutsheni - first under British colonial rule, followed by UDI and the leadership of Ian Smith - needs to be more widely known. Similar institutions were built throughout the Empire, and many still exist throughout the world.
Both a political history and a moral critique of the twentieth century, this is a personal and impassioned book from one of Europe's most outstanding intellectuals. Identifying totalitarianism as the major innovation of the twentieth century, Tzvetan Todorov examines the struggle between this system and democracy and its effects on human life and consciousness. Totalitarianism managed to impose itself because, more than any other political system, it played on people's need for the absolute: it fed their hope to endow life with meaning by taking part in the construction of a paradise on earth. As a result, millions of people lost their lives in the name of a higher good. While democracy even...
Since the Genocide against the Tutsi, when up to one million Rwandan people were brutally killed, Rwanda has undergone a remarkable period of reconstruction. Driven by a governmental programme of unity and reconciliation, the last 25 years have seen significant changes at national, community, and individual levels. This book gathers previously unpublished testimonies from individuals who lived through the genocide. These are the voices of those who experienced one of the most horrific events of the 20th Century. Yet, their stories do not simply paint a picture of lives left destroyed and damaged; they also demonstrate healing relationships, personal growth, forgiveness and reconciliation. Through the lens of positive psychology, the book presents a range of perspectives on what happened in Rwanda in 1994, and shows how people have been changed by their experience of genocide.