Clemantine Wamariya Quotes

Joyful Clemantine Wamariya is a Rwandan-American author, speaker, and human rights advocate.Born in Rwanda, she was forced to leave her home in Kigali and her parents at the age of six due to the Rwandan Genocide. She sought refuge with her extended family in the south of the country but was forced to flee again when the genocidaires targeted the family there. She and her older sister escaped the country and spent several years seeking refuge through Africa before being granted a refugee asylum to the United States.

She settled with a family in the Chicago area and began formal schooling for the first time at the age of thirteen. She gained international attention in 2006 through an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show which featured a surprise reunion with her parents. After graduating from Yale University, she pursued a career as a storyteller with engagements including a TED talk. In 2018, she published a book recounting her life experiences, titled The Girl Who Smiled Beads. She is a 2019 recipient of the Alex Awards. Wikipedia

✵ 1988

Clemantine Wamariya: 2 quotes0 likes

Clemantine Wamariya Quotes

“I want to be so loud about the experience of killing each other. I want to tap into everyone’s senses, to touch on our human sensibility.”

Clemantine Wamariya

On what she hopes The Girl Who Smiled Beads accomplishes in “A moment on ‘Oprah’ made her a human rights symbol. She wants to be more than that.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/a-moment-on-oprah-made-her-a-human-rights-symbol-she-wants-to-be-more-than-that/2018/04/18/f394dd0c-3d98-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html in The Washington Post (2018 Apr 19)

“It’s the journey of digging deep into yourself and the things you discover if you only dare to dig deep into your memories, your relationship, and your thoughts. It’s been such an incredible journey, but thank goodness I was not alone in it. So many people feeding me, listening to me, editing, hosting me—so it’s not been alone.”

Clemantine Wamariya

On her book The Girl Who Smiled Beads in “A Conversation with Clemantine Wamariya https://www.readitforward.com/author-interview/clemantine-wamariya/” in Read it Forward (2017)