Previous
Clemantine’s Grandmother
Mukamana is Clemantine’s nanny when she is a young girl in Rwanda. Clemantine always asks Mukamana to tell her stories that explain how the world works. Often, Mukamana tells Clemantine the story of a magical girl who wandered the earth and smiled a trail of beads. She always let Clemantine choose the ending to this open-ended story. One day, Mukamana mysteriously disappears. When Clemantine asks her mother, her mother says Mukamana’s disappearance was because of the conflict in Rwanda. Much later, Clemantine returns to Mukamana’s story of the girl who smiled beads to make sense of her own life.
Mukamana Quotes in The Girl Who Smiled Beads
The The Girl Who Smiled Beads quotes below are all either spoken by Mukamana or refer to Mukamana. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 16 Quotes
The plot provided by the universe was filled with starvation, war, and rape. I would not—could not—live in that tale.
Instead, I would be the girl who smiled beads, my version of the girl who smiled beads, one who had power and agency over her life, one who did not get caught.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes
I had only a character, a rubric. The girl who smiled beads gave me a way to go through the world […] but I was still looking for a narrative that felt coherent and complete. […] I still, still, after everything […] longed for Mukamana. I wanted her to sit on the side of my bed, talk to me, and make my world feel not just magnificent but logical and whole.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Girl Who Smiled Beads LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Mukamana Character Timeline in The Girl Who Smiled Beads
The timeline below shows where the character Mukamana appears in The Girl Who Smiled Beads. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...dress like Claire or like Pudi, who loves Puma and Adidas. She nags her nanny, Mukamana, for stories that explain the world. Clemantine’s favorite story is about a magical girl who...
(full context)
...money at the time. Therefore, Clemantine now feels very special. Once, on a rainy day, Mukamana picks her up and lets her wear Claire’s green raincoat and umbrella. Clemantine wants to...
(full context)
...stoning someone for stealing. Clemantine wonders if these are the angry men from the hills Mukamana once told her a story about. At home, Clemantine’s mother is angry that they walked...
(full context)
Chapter 16
...she had a doll with bead eyes. Exasperated, Claire says that Clemantine is thinking of Mukamana’s story, which Clemantine always asked Claire to repeat: “once there was a girl who smiled...
(full context)
When Mukamana told Clemantine this story, she gave her the character and let Clemantine fill in the...
(full context)
Chapter 21
...has agency, but she still longs for a coherent narrative of her life. Clemantine wants Mukamana to tell her the plot, but she knows she must write it herself. She gets...
(full context)
