EVERY year on April 7, Rwanda begins 100 days of commemorating the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi that claimed the lives of over one million innocent people.
As the country and friends mourn for the 28th time, here is a list of books that can help you understand and reflect on the Genocide. All the books can be found on Amazon or in different bookshops and libraries across the country.
Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust - Immaculee Ilibagiza
Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994, her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Ilibagiza’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of over a million Rwandans.
Incredibly, Ilibagiza survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Ilibagiza discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able to seek out and forgive her family’s killers.
Moi, le dernier Tutsi (Me, the Last Tutsi) - Charles Habonimana
Charles Habonimana is a Genocide survivor. In April 1994 when Rwanda fell into horror and criminal madness, he was condemned, like all the other Tutsi in Mayunzwe, his village. Like all the other Tutsi in the country.
His executioners will decide otherwise and make him the symbol of the ongoing genocide. He will be ‘the last Tutsi’, the one who will be killed when all the others, those in the village, have been eliminated. Placed under this terrible status of suspended death, he sees his family fall, one after the other. Men, women, children, old people.
His testimony looks back on one of the worst tragedies of the past century, inscribing it in the history of the genocides of the 20th century. It is also meant to be a song of hope for the future of his country.
From Red Earth: A Rwandan Story of Healing and Forgiveness – Denise Uwimana
In the space of a hundred days, a million Tutsi in Rwanda were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbours. At the height of the Genocide, as men with bloody machetes ransacked her home, Uwimana gave birth to her third son. With the unlikely help of Hutu Good Samaritans, she and her children survived. Her husband and other family members were not as lucky.
If this were only a memoir of those chilling days and the long, hard road to personal healing and freedom from her past, it would be remarkable enough. But Uwimana didn’t stop there. Leaving a secure job in business, she devoted the rest of her life to restoring her country by empowering other Genocide widows to band together, tell their stories, find healing, and rebuild their lives. The stories she has uncovered through her work and recounted here illustrate the complex and unfinished work of truth-telling, recovery, and reconciliation that may be Rwanda’s lasting legacy. Rising above their nation’s past, Rwanda’s Genocide survivors are teaching the world the secret to healing the wound of war and ethnic conflict.
Ma mère m’a tué (My Mother Killed Me) - Albert Nsengimana
Albert Nsengimana was barely seven years old when the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi took place. While his mother, a Hutu, orchestrated and accompanied the killing of her own children, some of whom she delivered herself to Hutu militiamen who perpetrated the massacres, Albert miraculously escaped death.
Through this story that is beyond comprehension, Nsengimana found the strength to tell the world: "Never again”. His story demonstrates the resilience of the Rwandan people, the difficulties that the country must face, and the need for forgiveness at a time when the first génocidaires are coming out of prison.
Not My Time to Die – Yolande Mukagasana
This gripping memoir features Yolande Mukagasana as a Rwandan nurse and mother of three children who likes wearing jeans and designer glasses. She runs her own clinic in Nyamirambo and is planning a party for her wedding anniversary. But when the Genocide starts, everything changes. Targeted because she’s a successful woman and a Tutsi, she flees for her life. The book also describes the betrayal of friends and help that comes from surprising places. Quick-witted and courageous, Mukagasana never loses hope she will find her children alive.
My Son, It Is a Long Story: Reflections of Genocide Perpetrators – Edouard Bamporiki
Written by State Minister in the Ministry of Youth and Culture, the book tells 67 stories and testimonies gathered from Genocide perpetrators, now serving their jail sentences in different correctional facilities in the country, 12 of whom are women. The stories have also been translated into Kinyarwanda in the book "Mitingi Jenosideri; Imbundo, Imbarutso y’Imbunda Yarimbuye Imbaga.”
The book has been a journey, chronicling the pain of Rwandans. According to the author, the stories were collected and the book was written to give first-hand information to the future generations about the history of the country.
That Child is Me – Claver Irakoze, Illustrations by Mika Hirwa
‘That Child is Me’ is inspired by Claver Irakoze’s personal story of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The book is gently written and at the same time captures the pain and heartache of Irakoze’s Genocide journey. The words are accompanied by eye-catching illustrations by Mika Hirwa, which help bring to life Irakoze’s story for a young audience. The book includes discussion questions that Irakoze hopes will contribute to the important dialogue between parents and their children.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda – Philip Gourevitch
This book chronicles what has happened in Rwanda and neighbouring states since 1994 when the Rwandan government called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority. Though the killing was low-tech largely by machete, it was carried out at shocking speed: over one million people were exterminated in a hundred days. A Tutsi pastor, in a letter to his church president, a Hutu, used the chilling phrase that gives Gourevitch his title.
The book is a narration of a story where a foreigner came to Rwanda in 1995 seeking answers to the story that was on everyone’s mind: how one could kill another in such a cold-blooded manner. The other question that comes to mind as one reads the book is the quietness of foreign nations. Was it complicity or plain ignorance?
Intent to Deceive: Denying the Genocide of the Tutsi – Linda Melvern
This book tells the story of the campaign of genocide denial from its origins with those who planned the massacres. With unprecedented access to government archives including in Rwanda, Linda Melvern explains how, from the moment the killers seized the power of the state, they were determined to distort the reality of events.
The book is a testament to the survivors who still live with the horrors of the past. Denial causes them the gravest offence and ensures that the crime continues. It serves as a call for justice that remains perpetually delayed.
Shake Hands with the Devil – Romeo Dallaire
When Romeo Dallaire was called on to serve as force commander of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda, he believed that his assignment was to help two warring parties achieve the peace they both wanted. Instead, he was exposed to the most barbarous and chaotic display of civil war and genocide in the past decade, observing in just one hundred days the killings of more than a million Rwandans. With only a few troops, his own ingenuity, and the courage to direct his efforts, Dallaire rescued thousands, but his call for more support from the world fell on deaf ears.
In Shake Hands with the Devil, General Dallaire recreates the awful history the world community chose to ignore. He also chronicles his own progression from confident Cold Warrior to devastated UN commander, and finally to retired general struggling painfully, and publicly, to overcome post-traumatic stress disorder.