The Girl Who Smiled Beads

By Greta Lynn Uehling, Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil

Book cover of The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

Book description

A riveting story of dislocation, survival, and the power of stories to break or save us

When Clemantine Wamariya was six years old, her world was torn apart. She didn't know why her parents began talking in whispers, or why her neighbours started disappearing, or why she could hear distant…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked The Girl Who Smiled Beads as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This novel about a girl’s flight from Rwanda is gripping.

She vividly captures how perceptions of risk are radically altered by war, how grief and trauma may take years to fully understand, and why we should not pity survivors but respect their strength. These are lessons I learned firsthand as a result of my research in Ukraine and that I also describe, in an expository style.

An important theme in this book, and one I explore at length in my own, is that once separated by politics or geography, family and friendships are difficult to re-knit. A lesson from the…

If you love The Girl Who Smiled Beads...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest By Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like The Girl Who Smiled Beads?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like The Girl Who Smiled Beads.

Browse books like The Girl Who Smiled Beads

Book cover of The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change
Book cover of The Divided Family in Civil War America
Book cover of Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganizing Society under the Nazis and Argentina's Military Juntas

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,593

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like The Girl Who Smiled Beads, you might also like...

Book cover of Honeymoon at Sea: How I Found Myself Living on a Small Boat

Honeymoon at Sea By Jennifer Silva Redmond,

When Jennifer Shea married Russel Redmond, they made a decision to spend their honeymoon at sea, sailing in Mexico. The voyage tested their new relationship, not just through rocky waters and unexpected weather, but in all the ways that living on a twenty-six-foot sailboat make one reconsider what's truly important.…

Book cover of A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France

A Long Way from Iowa By Janet Hulstrand,

This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Rwanda, refugees, and Ukraine?

Rwanda 18 books
Refugees 148 books
Ukraine 99 books