We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda (Bestselling Backlist)
by Philip Gourevitch
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Book Summary Information
Author: Philip GourevitchEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 1999-09-04
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 356
Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda (Bestselling Backlist)
Book Review: The book to read if you're reading only one
Summary: 5 Stars
To many Americans, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 came out of nowhere -- one more of those incomprehensible "tribal" conflicts that Africa is known for in the popular imagination. But the genocide had many and tangled roots -- ethnic, colonial and religious. Through a series of in-depth essays and interviews with participants, Philip Gourevitch lays out the whole sorry mess. We meet the Hutu head pastor who many say oversaw the slaughter of his Tutsi sub-pastors and their flocks. We experience the longstanding government sponsored hate radio that fired up simmering ethnic hatreds and announced the start of the genocide. We feel the terror of Tutsi families fleeing the "genocidaires" or facing them -- their neighbors and friends -- as they threw the grenades and swung the machetes that ended their lives. Through the book, we get a sense of the story behind the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Paul Kagame, now Rwanda's president. The RPF are about the only good guys in the story, a fairly disciplined Tutsi army in exile fighting to protect its own. Damningly, we also see the impotent reactions of the US and UN as they pulled away from the genocide, letting it run its course. Then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright does not come off well in these accounts. Nor does US President Bill Clinton. Nor does Kofi Annan, then in charge of UN Peacekeeping Operations. All refused to acknowledge the genocide, or (in Annan's case) actually played into the hands of the murderous government in Kigali. Gourevitch also records the horrifying state of post-genocide UN refugees camps -- full of Hutus fleeing Tutsi retribution as well as well-armed, fanatical genocidaires. There are no easy answers to demobilizing an armed population after an event of that magnitude and ferocity. Importantly, Gourevitch provides details about Rwandan history for the last couple of hundred years, to and neyond the time of European colonial misrule that planted the seeds of the recent conflict.
I was especially interested in parallels between the misuse of media in Rwanda and the recent US tendency to air hateful and divisive views. The Rwandans had the explicit goal of stirring up hatred to facilitate the coming genocide, and the US example seems mostly ratings- and profit-oriented. But tweak the realities a little and our own "civilized" hearts could rise to the level of widespread madness and murder that occurred in Rwanda, and before that in Europe and many other places in the world. Primate DNA + cultural license can lead to many horrifying results.
There are many books about the Rwanda genocide, but this is the best at describing the actions of so many of the actors. If you only plan to read one book about Rwanda, let it be this one. Gourevitch has shined a welcome light on the seemingly irrational actions of those in "darkest" Africa.
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Summary of We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda (Bestselling Backlist)
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.In April 1994, the Rwandan government called upon everyone in the Hutu majority to kill each member of the Tutsi minority, and over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis perished in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler's war against the Jews. Philip Gourevitch's haunting work is an anatomy of the war in Rwanda, a vivid history of the tragedy's background, and an unforgettable account of its aftermath. One of the most acclaimed books of the year, this account will endure as a chilling document of our time.
"Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus--if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute.
The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker, describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? --Maria Dolan
Central Africa Books
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