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 Africa, Clemantine imagines every night how she’ll fight if a man attacks her. She plans to use her whole body as a weapon, physically, emotionally, and verbally. She never accepts help, especially from a man, because accepting help allows the other person to demand repayment.
One of the main things that Clemantine fears is being attacked or raped by a man. She is therefore hesitant to accept help from men, fearing that they might expect something from her in return for their good deeds—a good illustration of how her traumatic past has impacted the way she moves through the world in the present.
Themes
Clemantine’s rage at losing her Mickey Mouse backpack consumes everything. The men walk into Tete to find help while the women wait. Clemantine tries to sleep, wanting to escape the world. Suddenly, women emerge in nun’s habits and offer them food. A little later, more women arrive and tell them that the immigration police arrested three of the men, including Rob. Clemantine and the group follow the nuns to an old soldiers’ camp, where they are given more food and baby supplies.
Without her Mickey Mouse backpack, Clemantine doesn’t want to exist anymore. She tries to go to sleep because she can’t bear the life that she has. The contents of her backpack represented her old self, and now that it is gone, her hope that she’ll one day resume her life as a child with a home and a family goes away too.
Themes
In the morning, the nuns walk the women to the prison. They wait on a bench, attacked by mosquitoes, until a guard comes and locks them in a small windowless room. Claire screams at the guards that they should be ashamed of themselves. Clemantine joins in. She is still furious about her backpack, but relieved to be away from Rob. However, Clemantine and Claire need Rob: he is their shield against other men. Finally, a guard who speaks Swahili unlocks the door and gives them money to take a bus to a camp in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique. That night, they sleep again with the nuns, and the next day the men are released.
Like the immigration police who beat Claire and Rob, the guards at the prison have no mercy for refugees or for the unique plights of women. During this time, all the women are particularly in danger of heartless men and the threat of rape. Rob, who has also shown himself as a heartless and cruel man, is Clemantine and Claire’s only shield against other men. In this way, women fight a unique war as refugees in which they are always at men’s mercy.
Themes
Clemantine knows that Rob hates her and wants to leave her behind. When the family arrives in Maputo, immigration guards take them to a surprisingly nice camp run like a hostel. There are cots to sleep on, they are treated like people, and they are given plenty of food. On Fridays, the Italian owners give them pasta. However, children still cry for their mothers at night.
Right away, Clemantine thinks that the Maputo refugee camp is more fit to be a home than any other she has seen. However, no matter how good the living conditions are, children still long for their parental figures. This shows that food and shelter are not the only thing people need in life.
Themes
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Many people in the Maputo camp have lived there for 20 years. Claire asks one of these old-timers to bring her into Maputo. In town, Claire asks a general store owner if he’ll pay her for pasta from Italy. She shows the store owner a sample, and he offers her a price. Back at camp that evening, Claire pays the refugees for their pasta. She returns to Maputo the next day, sells the pasta, and purchases soap and milk. She then has Clemantine sell these goods at the camp, starting a small black-market economy. Claire gives Rob some money to go to South Africa to get a job. Clemantine starts to feel happy and safe, but Claire is afraid of getting too comfortable.
Claire starts her own successful business at the refugee camp. The nice living conditions of the camp and the money that Claire’s business brings in make Clemantine feel happy; to her, this feels like enough. To Claire, however, settling down makes them vulnerable and stagnant. In this way, she wills the refugee and migrant life upon herself and her family. Her goal isn’t to find a home but to move on to bigger and better things—a never-ending mission.
Themes
