Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Left to Tell is join going to be an upcoming literature circle novel for our CP students.  The unit will focus on multicultural memoirs.  Multicultural meaning it's written about an experience outside the United States and memoir meaning it is told by the person who went through the experience.  I have to say that this book was the one I knew the least about when we started planning the unit.  I was 13 years old when the Rwandan Holocaust occurred and it was not something I knew much about.  Okay, anything.  At least at the time.

But I did know about Hotel Rwanda, a Hollywood film created in 2004 that depicts the Holocaust from the eyes of Paul Rusebagina, who attempts to shelter his own family and over a thousand other refugees at the hotel  he managed.  Though the movie was not real, the story of Paul was real.  And the event was real.  It's hard to believe that something so much like the Holocaust during WW2 could happen again.  More than 50 years later.  It's like the Rwandans didn't learn anything from that experience, nor the rest of the world, who failed to come to the aid of the Tutsi's being persecuted.  Here is a short clip from the film, showing the chaos in the streets, the fear of the citizens, and the brutality of the Holocaust.  (Don't worry…nothing too violent).

The whole purpose of talking about this film is that I had some background knowledge before I actually picked up the book and started reading.  And I'm glad.  Questions I had in the movie were easily explained by Immaculee in her memoir.  If you click on the hyperlink in the first paragraph, you can read a short summary of Immaculee's story.  Immaculee was a successful, smart young woman who had her entire life on the horizon.  She did well in school, earning a scholarship to University.  She had friends and aspirations, a loving family.  When the genocide began, her father begged her to come back from University for the Easter break.  Immaculee was so glad she did.   She was able to see her family one last time.  When the rebels started the attacks and began looking for her family, she escaped to a local pastor's house and was hidden with six other women in a bathroom for the three month duration.  Currently, I am at the part where she is hiding in the bathroom.  She must remain absolutely silent while hiding.

I love her word choice here, where she is describing what it was like when the rebels were actually at the pastor's house to start searching for her: "Hundreds of people surrounded the house, many of whom were dressed like devils, wearing skirts of tee bark and shirts of dried banana leaves, and some even had goat horns strapped onto their heads.  Despite their demonic costumes, their faces were easily recognizable, and there was murder in their eyes" (Ilibagiza 77).  You can only imagine the terror she felt at that moment.  During another attempt and finding the women at the pastor's house, Immaculee reflects, "Prayer became my armor, and I wrapped it tightly around my heart" (Ilibagiza 85).   I loved the personification used here.  Immaculee is a strong writer.  Combine that with a gripping story and you have a recipe for a you-can't-put-it-down book.  I hope some of you choose to read this during our multicultural memoir unit!

Mrs. Palmer's Summer Reading

This post will be a bit atypical from my normal posts.  I typically focus on one text and go into detail about some of it's features.  Today, I plan to highlight several books I've read over the summer since I took a blogging hiatus.

Maus
This book is a graphic novel…to be honest, it's the first graphic novel I've actually read in its entirety.  I guess I always had a preconceived notion that graphic novels were too simplistic and didn't carry much of a story line.  I stand corrected.  Maus was interesting, forced me to use both pictures and words to tell a complete story (something I only do when reading picture books with my children), and actually quite serious in plot.  It is a story about the Holocaust, told from the perspective of a young Jewish boy interviewing his father, a man who survived the Holocaust.  What I was expecting to be an unrealistic cartoon surprised me; it was powerful.  Some of you will have the opportunity to read this later during our multicultural memoir unit this Fall.  If you want to know more, click here.

The Death of Bees
This was the first book I read this summer.  I selected it because it was one of the Alex Award winners, so I knew some students may come in this school year and chose this for summer reading.  The premise of this book was actually quite crazy, and I'm being somewhat vague to avoid spoilers, but here it is: Two girls find their father and mother both dead in their rundown house.  Their parents were horrible to them, so instead of calling the authorities, they decide to bury them in their backyard and just live by themselves, pretending the parents ran off on an adventure when anyone close to them asked.  The girls end up becoming friends with a neighbor…and I have to stop here or I'll spoil something.  I LOVED this book!  Read more here.

The Universe Versus Alex Woods
This was another book title that appeared on the Alex Award list.  This one took me a bit longer to get through than The Death of Bees, though I still did enjoy it.  This title was about a boy named Alex Woods who was struck by a meteor at the age of ten and suffered some health consequences as a result, such as seizures.  The novel starts right in the action of Alex trying to cross a European border with a dead man's ashes in the car.  Then the whole book flashes back to the events leading up to this pseudo-arrest.  There are definitely moments where this one seemed farfetched, but I didn't really mind.  The author kept you interested and the characterization was impeccable.  Another YA book with my stamp of approval!

These were the only three YA books I read this summer.  I can't wait to hear about your summer reading!