Clemantine Wamariya

thumb|Clemantine Wamariya in 2016 Clemantine Wamariya (born 1988) is a Rwandan-American Author, speaker, and human rights activist. Quotes 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. On her book The Girl Who Smiled Beads in “A Conversation with Clemantine Wamariya” in Read it Forward (2017) Home is a concept. It’s one of a story that we cling to so deeply. When your home has been really, “here is my couch, here is my this, here is my that,” it becomes like mine. For me, home is where people who are loving are. It could be on the street. It could be inside of a tent. It could be in a place where they’re not given a land, then that is a place called a slum. It could be in the high rises of New York or in the middle of chaos in Mexico City. And the physical piece of a home is so important, especially when the weather—sun, cold—is against you… On what she considers “home” in “A Conversation with Clemantine Wamariya” in Read it Forward (2017) Safety should be a birthright Every single person on the planet has equal humanity. In my own life I’ve gone from being seen as utterly worthless to [having] great privilege, and nothing about who I am inside has changed. Every person you see seeking refuge, every person you see walking away from their whole life because their country has descended into chaos and war…I am every one of those people. You are every one of those people too… On the plight of refugees in “Clemantine Wamariya, Who Survived Genocide in Rwanda, on Her New Memoir, The Girl Who Smiled Beads—and Living for Black Joy” in Vogue Magazine (2018 Mar 16) 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. 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.” in The Washington Post (2018 Apr 19) The reunion was one of the deepest, most joyful moments. Clemantine Wamariya. washingtonpost.com (April 19, 2018) I was the clever child who induced the fairy godmother to bring her parents back to life. Clemantine Wamariya. Read more on washingtonpost.com. (April 19, 2018) My mom says tears are good for your skin.” And maybe your soul, too. Clemantine Wamariya. Read more on washingtonpost.com. (April 19, 2018) Anything to help me connect with my strength beyond suffering. After Writing a Memoir About Her Past, Clemantine Wamariya. hotchkiss.org (March 28 2019) It’s strange, how you go from being a person who is away from home to a person with no home at all. The place that is supposed to want you has pushed you out. No other place takes you in. You are unwanted, by everyone. You are a refugee. He Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After. hotchkiss.org (March 28 2019) We don’t write about the human emotions of conflicts; we write about the political and economic aftermath. I wanted to write about those feelings. After Writing a Memoir About Her Past, Clemantine Wamariya. hotchkiss.org (March 28 2019) We’ve created these categories that divide us as humans, and in doing that, we miss each other. I want to bring people together and remind everyone that they have permission to know themselves and others beyond labels. After Writing a Memoir About Her Past, Clemantine Wamariya. hotchkiss.org (March 28 2019) There is so much human pain and suffering in the world. I want to honor all those difficult experiences and acknowledge their aftermath. After Writing a Memoir About Her Past, Clemantine Wamariya. hotchkiss.org (March 28 2019) I want to really live in the present, and find love and joy in the world around me. After Writing a Memoir About Her Past, Clemantine Wamariya. hotchkiss.org (March 28 2019) Staying alive was so much work…. You had to try to stay a person. Her New Memoir, The Girl Who Smiled Beads—and Living for Black Joy. vogue.com (March 16, 2018) One of the most valuable skills I’d learned while trying to survive as a refugee was reading what other people wanted me to do. I hadn’t seen my parents for 12 years. ideas.ted.com (May 8, 2018) In Malawi, I used to write my name in dust on trucks, hoping my mother would see my loopy cursive and realize that I was alive. I hadn’t seen my parents for 12 years. ideas.ted.com (May 8, 2018) The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story About War and What Comes After (2018) Often, still, my own life story feels fragmented, like beads unstrung. Each time I scoop up my memories, the assortment is slightly different. I worry, at times, that I’ll always be lost inside. I worry that I’ll be forever confused. Prologue quote My life does not feel logical, sequential, or inevitable. There’s no sense of action, reaction; no consequence, repercussion; no plot. It’s just fragments, floating. Chapter 2 I thought if I stated my name enough times, my identity would fall back into place […] But a name is a cover, a placeholder, not the whole story. A name is a basin with a leak that you need to constantly fill up. If you don’t, it drains and it’s just there, a husk, dry and empty. Chapter 3 I lost myself anyway. Every little thing. I had always loved the fancy soaps at my aunts’ houses. I loved the ones that smelled like geranium and lilac best of all. Chapter 3 I needed to see the world in front of me clearly so I could perform my part well. I needed to crack the code. So many times, in my former life, I’d had to become someone else in order to stay out of a refugee camp or out of jail, to stay alive. I had played a mother. I had played a yes ma’am younger sister. I had made myself a nobody, invisible. Now I had to become this strange creature: an American teenager. Chapter 4 I work every day now to erase [the] language of ruin, to destroy it and replace it with language of my own. With konona (rape, ruin), you’re told, there is no antidote, no cleansing agent. […] You’re polluted, you’re worthless—that’s it. Chapter 4 My body is destroyed and my body is sacred. I will not live in that story of ruin and shame. Chapter 4 But nothing gets better. There is no path for improvement—no effort you can make, nothing you can do, and nothing anybody else can do either, short of the killers in your country laying down their arms and stopping their war so that you can move home. Chapter 5 I now felt I’d made a mistake in Uvira. I’d let my guard down. I’d allowed myself to feel I belonged. But there was no real belonging—not anymore. There was only coming and going and coming and going and dying. There was no point in letting anybody get close. Chapter 5 I resent and revile [the word genocide]. The word is tidy and efficient. It holds no true emotion. It is impersonal when it needs to be intimate, cool and sterile when it needs to be gruesome. The word is hollow, true but disingenuous, a performance, the worst kind of lie. Chapter 6 I wanted to piece [the] world back together, but the idea of one group of people killing another group of people—people they lived with, people they knew—that chunk of knowledge could never fit itself in my mind. It was categorically, dimensionally, fundamentally wrong. It was like trying to store a tornado in a chest of drawers. That was not how the universe worked. Chapter 6 To be a refugee was to be a victim—it was tautological. And not just a victim due to external forces like politics or war. You were a victim due to some inherent, irrevocable weakness in you. You were a victim because you were less worthy, less good, and less strong than all the non-victims of the world. Chapter 7 It felt surreal and awful. I’d lost track of who I was and who we were to each other. None of us were the same people who’d lived together in that house in Kigali. Those people had died. We had all died. Chapter 8 I think maybe we need to change our system, the way we educate people. We need to teach our kids that you're not better than that person, you just are the same. And so that's why I stand up for any injustice thing, such as hunger, war, or the genocides. Eyewitness Testimony: Clemantine Wamariya. official youtube channel for United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (October 11, 2026) Words matter. They can heal and they can kill ... yet, they have a limit. War and what comes after. ted.com (October 11, 2026) I don't want words to describe this kind of behavior. I want words to stop it. But where are the words to stop this? And how do we find the words? But I believe, truly, we have to keep trying. War and what comes after. ted.com (October 11, 2026) My past receded, grew jumbled, distorted. Everything was too much and nothing. Time seemed like pages torn out of a book and scattered everywhere. This still happens to me standing right here. War and what comes after. ted.com (October 11, 2026) I felt every deep pain in me. And I know that there is absolutely nothing, nothing, that could restore the time we lost with each other and the relationship we could've had. War and what comes after. ted.com (October 11, 2026) You see, the chaos of the violence continues inside in the words we use and the stories we create every single day. But also on the labels that we impose on ourselves and each other. Once we call someone "other," "less than," "one of them" or "better than," believe me ... under the right condition, it's a short path to more destruction. More chaos and more noise that we will not understand. War and what comes after. ted.com (October 11, 2026) Words will never be enough to quantify and qualify the many magnitudes of human-caused destruction. In order for us to stop the violence that goes on in the world, I hope -- at least I beg you -- to pause. Let's ask ourselves: Who are we without words? Who are we without labels? Who are we in our breath? Who are we in our heartbeat? War and what comes after. ted.com (October 11, 2026) The word refugee leads to stereotypes or expectations that don't allow us to see who someone is. She Fled Rwanda To Survive — But Does Not Like The Words 'Refugee' Or 'Genocide'. npr.org (October 11, 2026) We all have stories about how we [or an ancestor] sought refuge. We clash when we forget that was the case or when [we] start to believe that one person's refuge story is better than or worse than another's. She Fled Rwanda To Survive — But Does Not Like The Words 'Refugee' Or 'Genocide'. npr.org (October 11, 2026) It is easy to get lost because all aspects of who you are, at least the things that used to make you a person, are stripped away. She Fled Rwanda To Survive — But Does Not Like The Words 'Refugee' Or 'Genocide'. npr.org (October 11, 2026) Every person who wants to know what hate can do should look at what happened in Rwanda. If you want to know that peace is possible, you should also look at Rwanda now: [Rwandans] working together every day to create peace and to live beyond hate. She Fled Rwanda To Survive — But Does Not Like The Words 'Refugee' Or 'Genocide'. npr.org (October 11, 2026) We need to be aware of what’s going on around us because sooner or later we’re going to have to pay for it with our own money, our own time, or our own lives. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) It’s important for youth to get involved in the challenges because we are so free, we have the time, we have so much energy, so much power in us right now to really tackle things that are challenging us. So when we are older and have kids, we can say, “I’m glad I did that because my kids, our kids, won’t have to worry about that challenge anymore”. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) I use stories to connect voids, to connect emotions so that if someone is going to tackle the challenges, they have a face, a story, an image of what that challenge looks like. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) You have to name what you’re tackling, so I try to give a face, give a name in order to really awaken people to realize we’re in trouble. We’re losing our brothers, our sisters. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) I asked myself how is it possible that people are still walking around? How can we exist knowing we’ve been so destructive, so hurtful to others? Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) We should all be freaking out because those people are just like me, they’re just like you—we’re not that different. The difference is that I survived all those different wars, different poverties of mind, and lack of kindness. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) That’s why I ended up saying I’m not ready to be quiet, to pretend that I live in this beautiful, bubbly world. It’s beautiful, understand, but you have to recognize the injustices going on around you. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) If I know my skill, which is to fight for what I want, I’m going to use it to invite others to be with me, to understand it with me. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) And just like others are improving technology, improving the roads and education, I want to improve the way we see one another; and telling stories is the way I want to do it. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) I can’t tell anyone to do something, I can only encourage. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) To be able to make impacts starts within, and asking oneself, what is the one thing keeping you awake at night? What is the last thought that sometimes gets in your head? When you have discovered that in you, use it as a tool. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) Think about not only doing for yourself, but doing for others. Because when you try solving that thing that makes you angry or keeps you up at night for others, it’s going to be a fuel for those powers. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) As young people, we need to know about our powers, our abilities. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) You need to have compassion and be passionate, because those two tools are anchors to loving and respecting others, to being mindful of others. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) If you want to tackle any of the challenges in the world, it has to start within you and it has to start with compassion and passion. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) Being together on the same stage, to see others celebrating their cultures and be invited to celebrate with them, it’s not just another dance, the events get us intrigued about one another and the whole experience... is to show each of us that we’re alive, we’re here, we’re existing. Honour that. Q & A with Clemantine Wamariya. inside.tru.ca (October 11, 2026) We are always peace and joy, we are already love, but we are also the opposite of that. It depends on where you put your time and your energy and awareness Interview with ‘08 grad Clemantine Wamariya. newtriernews.org (October 11, 2026) The brain is all muscle and you need to train it. Interview with ‘08 grad Clemantine Wamariya. newtriernews.org (October 11, 2026) The point is, if you're in a hurry, you'll miss out on the good stuff. An interview with Clemantine Wamariya. bookbrowse.com (October 11, 2026) Describing myself is not one of my strengths! I used to feel so frustrated that I couldn't produce a simple description of who I am or even what I do. But I recently made peace with this. Who I am and what I'm doing depends on who I am with. As a child, I learned to adapt. An interview with Clemantine Wamariya. bookbrowse.com (October 11, 2026) Refusing to be frozen as a particular character is now a practice to me. It allows me to try to be intimate and equal with everybody. An interview with Clemantine Wamariya. bookbrowse.com (October 11, 2026) Many have built fortunes on others' suffering. Yet people do gain privilege honestly, through talent and work. An interview with Clemantine Wamariya. bookbrowse.com (October 11, 2026) I want to give audiences a way to go inside themselves and their identities. Our lives are cluttered with so many labels. I want to peel those back and help people see what's underneath. An interview with Clemantine Wamariya. bookbrowse.com (October 11, 2026) We are all equally valuable, and nothing anybody can do or say can alter that. An interview with Clemantine Wamariya. bookbrowse.com (October 11, 2026) we are all equally human. We all need to learn and relearn that basic lesson, every day. An interview with Clemantine Wamariya. bookbrowse.com (October 11, 2026) I’m not going to be their voice; that’s their voice. I want to allow people to voice their life beyond labels. Clemantine Wamariya experienced the Rwandan genocide, but she is not a victim. stylist.co.uk (October 11, 2026) I thought I was having an identity crisis but I have come to reason that being many things is not at all bad. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) When I think of all the crimes committed against humanity and people who live with such hate, I realize that this happen not just in Rwanda, but around the world. This behavior is a moral issue needs to be re-evaluated for the sake of the progression of humanity. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) For me, to rise above the hate in this world, is to love more and to be more mindful of the decisions I make. I am not perfect, I am just trying to do the opposite of what has led many to hatred and destruction. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) My goal is to reach out to future leaders, learn from them and nurture them to be compassionate, conscious and more loving. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) I want to live a forward thinking life as it is healthier. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) Every moment counts. Every person counts. I want people to grow into my life and I often challenge the students whom I’ve met to truly live life to the fullest. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) Its not about growing taller, older or wealthier but more about growing the peace within oneself and with others. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) With power of love and compassion, anything is possible. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) I see challenges as opportunities to learn and grow. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) To me nothing is impossible if you allow your imagination to run wild, why not! INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) I have learned that my life and my experiences are not for me to keep. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) I will continue to empower the youth all over the world. I want to focus more on the human development capital. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) When you take care of your people, they will take care of themselves and their country. If you abandon the people, the country will be abandoned. INTERVIEW + VIDEO: Genocide: The Importance of Relationships – My Story. kalamu.com (October 11, 2026) External links Litcharts Category:1988 births Category:Living people Category:Memoirists from the United States Category:Women authors from the United States Category:Activists from Rwanda Category:Women activists from the United States Category:Human rights activists Category:Orators from the United States Category:Women from Rwanda Category:Women born in the 1980s