The Girl Who Smiled Beads

by

Clemantine Wamariya

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Mickey Mouse Backpack Symbol Analysis

Mickey Mouse Backpack Symbol Icon

Clemantine’s Mickey Mouse backpack—and specifically the loss of it—represents her sense of unbelonging as a refugee. Rob’s family in Uvira, Zaire initially gives her the backpack. While living with the family in Zaire, Clemantine felt special and loved for the first time since leaving her parents and her childhood home in Rwanda during the Rwandan Genocide. When Clemantine and Claire leave Uvira and become refugees again, Clemantine holds onto the Mickey Mouse backpack as her most valued possession. She fills it with rocks from every place she and Claire pass through, trying to hold onto landmarks that will cement and memorialize her transitory life. She also collects marbles for her brother Pudi in the backpack, wanting to have something to give him when she gets home.

When Clemantine accidentally leaves her Mickey Mouse backpack on a crowded bus, she is devastated. The loss of the backpack symbolizes the loss of her life story, since it contained everything that captured her fractured life since becoming a refugee. Clemantine starts to lose hope that she’ll ever belong anywhere, or that she’ll ever get back home. The tragic loss of the backpack is repeated when Claire and Clemantine arrive in the United States, and the airline loses their bag. The loss of this bag—which held the few items they had painstakingly collected before leaving Africa—is once again the loss of the past. Throughout the novel, the loss of possessions—particularly the loss of the Mickey Mouse backpack—represents the refugee experience. The loss of the backpack is the loss of childhood, home, continuity, and possession—everything that makes a person feel they belong.

Mickey Mouse Backpack Quotes in The Girl Who Smiled Beads

The The Girl Who Smiled Beads quotes below all refer to the symbol of Mickey Mouse Backpack. 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:
Trauma and Faith Theme Icon
).
Chapter 17 Quotes

I need more than the artifacts stuffed into a suitcase. I need to comprehend my history, a deep history. I know the facts about the genocide […] But that is not enough. The past, that story, cannot fill me. I need a longer, broader, more fully human backstory, a history not all soaked in blood. I need clarity, perspective, joy, beauty, originality, intelligence, a wide-angle view.

Related Characters: Clemantine Wamariya (speaker)
Related Symbols: Mickey Mouse Backpack
Page Number: 220
Explanation and Analysis:
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Mickey Mouse Backpack Symbol Timeline in The Girl Who Smiled Beads

The timeline below shows where the symbol Mickey Mouse Backpack appears in The Girl Who Smiled Beads. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5
Narrative, Memory, and Fragmentation  Theme Icon
Displacement and Identity  Theme Icon
...disappears when they lose their language. Shortly after she turns eight, Clemantine is given a Mickey Mouse backpack . She loves it and fills it with the marbles she’s collected for Pudi. (full context)
Chapter 7
Trauma and Faith Theme Icon
Women, War, and Survival Theme Icon
Clemantine still has her Mickey Mouse backpack . Inside, she carries her favorite sweater and rocks from every place they’ve been—Lake Tanganyika,... (full context)
Displacement and Identity  Theme Icon
Women, War, and Survival Theme Icon
...asking Clemantine, Claire and Rob have decided to leave. Clemantine hates them. She packs her Mickey Mouse backpack . (full context)
Narrative, Memory, and Fragmentation  Theme Icon
Displacement and Identity  Theme Icon
...town of Tete, where they get off the bus. Suddenly, Clemantine realizes she left her Mickey Mouse backpack on the bus. She asks Rob and Claire to go back for it, but they... (full context)
Chapter 9
Narrative, Memory, and Fragmentation  Theme Icon
Displacement and Identity  Theme Icon
Clemantine’s rage at losing her Mickey Mouse backpack consumes everything. The men walk into Tete to find help while the women wait. Clemantine... (full context)
Chapter 17
Displacement and Identity  Theme Icon
...trip to Disneyland. On the flight to Los Angeles, Clemantine tells a coworker about her Mickey Mouse backpack —the treasure she lost that still makes her cry. Clemantine loves Disneyland; it is proof... (full context)