Alternating between Rwanda and the United States, Clemantine Wamariya’s memoir traces her journey from being a refugee during the Rwandan Genocide to being an immigrant in the United States. The story opens with Clemantine and her sister Claire appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show because Clemantine has won Oprah’s essay contest on Elie Wiesel’s book Night. Oprah surprises Clemantine and Claire by flying out their parents and siblings—whom they haven’t seen in 12 years—from Rwanda to attend the show. Clemantine and Claire are happy to see them, but visiting with their estranged family is painfully awkward.
Back before the Rwandan Genocide, when Clemantine is six years old, she lives in Kigali, Rwanda. She plays in a mango tree with her older brother Pudi, helps her mother tend the flowers in her garden, and plies her father for sips of his beer. Clemantine’s nanny Mukamana tells Clemantine stories, such as one about a girl who wandered the earth and smiled beads. Clemantine’s life is normal until strange things start to happen: Mukamana disappears, grenades explode in neighbors’ houses, and her parents speak in whispers. Clemantine’s mother sends Clemantine and Claire to their grandmother’s house where they hide until their grandmother tells them to flee.
Clemantine and Claire travel with a group of wounded refugees. They stay in abandoned schools and farmers’ shacks and eventually in a refugee camp in Burundi. They live in the camp for a year, eating rock-hard corn and trying not to get sick. Clemantine feels that her identity is slipping away. A refugee aid worker, Rob, convinces Claire to marry him, and Clemantine and Claire go to Uvira, Zaire to live with his family. Rob’s family is nice to Clemantine, and she starts to feel at home again. Claire gives birth to her and Rob’s first child, Mariette. Soon, conflict starts to escalate in Uvira, so Clemantine, Claire, and Rob’s family flee to Kazimia. From there, they flee with 50 others to Tanzania on a boat that nearly sinks before they make it.
From Tanzania, Clemantine and Claire move around, settling in various refugee camps in Mozambique and South Africa. One night, after walking all day, Clemantine leaves her Mickey Mouse backpack—her prized possession—on a crowded bus, and Rob and Claire refuse to go back for it. Wherever they live, Clemantine takes care of Mariette while Claire makes money bartering with other refugees. Whenever Clemantine starts to feel comfortable, Claire decides to move on. When Claire gets pregnant again, Rob—who has started to abuse Claire—tells her to leave. Clemantine and Claire go back to Kazimia to stay with Rob’s family. They cower in the house with nothing to eat while war breaks out around them. Claire gives birth to Freddy, and Clemantine nearly dies from malaria and malnutrition.
Claire, Clemantine, Mariette and Freddy then flee to Zambia. They stay on couches until Rob suddenly shows up, and the family then moves to Chibolya, a filthy slum in Lusaka. Claire sells goods in the Lusaka market while Clemantine takes care of the kids and tries to avoid being raped. Rob continues to beat Claire and have affairs. Finally, Claire seeks help with an organization that assists refugees in immigrating to the United States, and the family gets a flight to Chicago.
In Chicago, Clemantine, Claire, and Rob stay with the Beasleys until they move into a tiny apartment. The Beasleys help Clemantine enroll in a private school, and she goes to stay with the Thomases during the week to attend school. Clemantine is given everything she needs, but she feels out of place with normal teenagers. She and Claire get in contact with their parents through an uncle and find out that Pudi is sick. Shortly after, Pudi dies.
While in high school, Clemantine reads Night and wins the Oprah contest. She attends Hotchkiss School in Connecticut and then starts college at Yale University. Meanwhile, Claire arranges for her and Clemantine’s parents to immigrate to the United States. Clemantine stays away from Claire’s apartment because it is too painful to be around her estranged parents. She focuses on her classes, asserting her experiences boldly and contentiously in every class and assignment. At one point, she goes to Kenya on a summer trip to learn Swahili. To her frustration, people there treat her like a servant instead of an intelligent Yale student.
After she graduates from Yale, Clemantine moves to San Francisco with her boyfriend Ryan. She likes Ryan but is still too traumatized to be vulnerable with anyone. When she comes back from a trip to Rwanda, Ryan has moved out. After this, Clemantine travels around telling her story and giving human rights talks. She goes to Rwanda again with the Holocaust Memorial Museum and witnesses the season in Rwanda dedicated to grieving the Rwandan Genocide.
Clemantine still feels out of place wherever she goes. She feels like The Girl Who Smiled Beads from Mukamana’s story but, just like that story, she feels that her life has no set plot. She wants to string together a coherent narrative of her life, but her identity always feels fragmented. Once, she lies soaking up the sun in a friend’s garden in Rwanda and feels peaceful and whole for the first time in her life.
Clemantine never stops yearning for a mother, and she plans a mother-daughter trip to Europe to give her and her mother a second chance to reconnect. While in Europe, she pampers her mother and tries to curate good experiences, but they are still distant. Clemantine wants to face the harsh truth of what happened in Rwanda, whereas her mother relies on religious faith to maintain a contented, optimistic outlook. Similarly, Claire believes in forgiving the atrocities of the genocide. When Clemantine’s mother gets on her plane back to Chicago, Clemantine opens her notebook and starts writing her story.
