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
Back in Mozambique, Claire and Clemantine drive in a car packed with people. They drive fast, fleeing Mozambique to South Africa where there are jobs. The driver stops near some trees and hands out food. The group walks miles through a nature preserve, avoiding snakes. Claire carries Mariette, and Clemantine misses the baby’s weight. Finally, they come to a barbed wire fence and crawl through a hole in its base. A truck picks them up and they drive towards twinkling lights. Clemantine asks Claire when they are going home, but Claire glares at her. Clemantine is afraid Claire will leave her behind.
Claire has evidently decided to leave Maputo, the nice refugee camp where she started the pasta business. Clemantine asks Claire when they are going home, still hoping that this moving from place to place is only a horrible vacation. From Clemantine’s young perspective, she has no idea who is picking them up, driving them around, and handing out food. Her ignorance of how their journey to South Africa is orchestrated makes their flight seem crazy and purposeless.
Themes
South Africa is beautiful. The first night, Clemantine and Claire sleep in an abandoned office with other refugees. A woman down the hall gives them ugali and a blanket. The next day, Claire finds Rob rooming with a group of families and working as a barber. They go to the Department of Home Affairs and get six-month visas. They don’t fear arrest. South Africa, under Nelson Mandela’s presidency, is peaceful and lively. The family settles in Durban, a coastal city with many money-making opportunities.
South Africa is the first country where Clemantine and her family can truly make a home. They obtain visas, meaning that they are now considered citizens instead of refugees. South Africa is also pleasant, peaceful, and profitable, meaning that they finally have the opportunity to thrive and become a part of society.
Themes
Claire believes that nobody deserves more or less than anyone else. Even as a refugee, she has kept one nice outfit so she can look like a confident, enterprising young woman wherever she goes. In Durban, she puts on her best outfit and finds an interpreter. She then knocks on doors and finds someone who hires her to wash clothes. Meanwhile, Clemantine spends time with Mariette. She is bullied by the neighborhood kids.
Claire has managed not to feel degraded even after all the degrading treatment she endured as a refugee. Her belief—that no person is more or less important than another—becomes a big part of Clemantine’s later philosophy of life. Clemantine wants all of humanity to share—something that ultimately requires equality.
Themes
Claire reads newspapers in Zulu on the bus and has the family attend Baptist church to fit in. She’s moved by the hymns even though she can’t understand them. One day at church, a white Afrikaans woman comes up to them and asks if they are refugees. Claire answers yes in English, and they follow the woman, Linda, to her house three blocks away. The woman feeds them fish, pork, and ice cream. The following week, they go to Linda’s house again and she gives them clothes. Linda helps them find a tiny apartment across from a brothel. Once, one of the sex workers offers to teach Clemantine how to kiss, but Clemantine says she’ll never kiss anyone.
As many times as Clemantine and Claire encounter cruel people, they also encounter kind, generous people. Linda, like Mucyechuru and Musaza, is one of these people. Linda’s kindness is as unprecedented as the violence, making Claire and Clemantine’s journey a mixture of light and dark. However, Clemantine’s decision that she’ll never kiss anyone shows that her trust has been ruined at a very young age. The only example she has of love is Claire and Rob, and it is not a good one.
Themes
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In South Africa, Clemantine’s life feels safe and easy. Rob gets a job making textiles outside of town and is gone for weeks at a time. Claire gets a job watching over cars at a fancy hotel. Clemantine learns a few words in Zulu from her neighbors. One day, Claire comes home and throws money on the bed, declaring that they are rich. She buys new clothes and a roast chicken and gizzards. In Africa, only men are allowed the chicken gizzards. But Claire fries them and feels like she’s eating power.
Claire initially married Rob in order to get herself out of poverty and homelessness. She shows afterwards, however, that she neither needs nor wants a man. She is able to make money and support her family on her own. Her act of frying and eating the chicken gizzards shows that she believes that women, like men, are powerful and worthy of reverence.
Themes
Mariette is Clemantine’s world. Clemantine pampers and protects her. One day, Linda registers Clemantine for school. She goes to the doctor for a check-up and finds out she has tuberculosis. She is quarantined in the hospital where she can see the ocean and eat custard. Linda brings her flowers and a backpack full pencils and paper. Clemantine wants Linda to be her mother.
Clemantine is obsessed with mothers. She longs for a mother in Linda, and she also acts out the role of mother towards Mariette. She loves being in the hospital because it makes her feel cared for, and she loves looking out for Mariette because it makes her feel a caretaker herself.
Themes
After Clemantine leaves the hospital, she and Claire move closer to the textile factory where Rob works. The street where they live is festive and prideful. Clemantine has to watch Mariette in this neighborhood, so she doesn’t start school. Every day, she ties Mariette to her back and watches a man who looks like her father come home from work. Clemantine rehearses her Zulu and one day goes up to the man’s daughter and says that her father looks like Clemantine’s father. The girl gets offended and walks away. Clemantine realizes she misspoke.
When Clemantine was a little girl in Rwanda, she loved going to school. Now, however, she doesn’t have time to pursue an education. Instead, she focuses on caring for Mariette and thinking about her own parents. She attempts to connect with the girl her age over the similarity of their fathers, but a language barrier prevents her from forging a bond with her. This is a sad example of how Clemantine’s years as a refugee have prevented her from connecting with others.
Themes
Claire loses her job watching cars and starts buying and reselling clothes. She also continues to work as a maid, and Clemantine and Mariette often go with her. They clean the living room and watch Oprah. Clemantine is fascinated by Oprah. Claire likes Oprah but doesn’t idolize her. Claire’s confidence comes from within, but Clemantine’s self-worth is based on praise. Clemantine feels she is far outside of what she wants to be.
Oprah, as one of the most successful Black women in the United States, inspires Claire and Clemantine long before they meet her. Oprah makes Clemantine aspire to higher heights while she empowers Claire to feel that, even in her hard life, she is as worthy and important as Oprah.
Themes
Claire gets pregnant again. Rob tells her to go back to Rwanda with Clemantine to find their parents while he stays in South Africa. Clemantine hates the idea of going back to Rwanda; they are finally safe. What is more, she knows her parents are dead. Claire doesn’t want to go either but, even though she’s headstrong, she is only 17 and has been raised to obey her husband. So Clemantine and Claire ride north and climb back through the barbed wire border fence.
Although marrying Rob initially helped Claire and Clemantine out of harsh circumstances, he now causes them more harm. Humiliated that he himself is a refugee, he turns Claire out to go back to her family, as if to insult her for being a refugee with no connections. Here, Rwanda’s strict traditions oppress Claire: she’s been taught to obey men.
Themes
