I don't know if anyone has noticed, but I have become much more selective in my bestowing of stars. Looking back, I think anything that held my attention got a 7 and anything I remembered beyond the day I finished it got a 9. Those days are gone and I have become much more Owen Gleiberman in my evaluations...I mean the man gave Little Miss Sunshine a C! First of all, the star system on my "My Recent Books" category is a 5-star system, not allowing for half stars. At first this really bugged me, but then I decided I had to be tough, make the hard choices and really differentiate between a 6 and an 8 instead of having the ubiquitous 7 to fall back on. In a future blog I will try to quantify exactly what a 6 means and why it's not an 8...but for now I'm still figuring it out.
And with that, I recommend Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza and in my struggle to assign stars, I have given it a 6, but I'm not really ready to discuss why until after I figure out exactly what my star system means...or if anyone really cares. This book was recommended to me and lent (if anyone wants to have the "lent"/"loaned" debate, bring it on!) to me by Vicky...thanks Vicky!
When self-improvement guru, Dr. Wayne Dyer met Immaculee briefly in New York, he was taken with her presence, her energy and her story and sought her out in order to bring her story to the world. They have since traveled together and appeared together and Dr. Dyer was instrumental in getting this book published. Immaculee was an upper middle class young woman attending college when her status as a Tutsi put her in the sights of the Hutu tribe which was seeking not just power over the Tutsi, but the ethnic cleansing of Tutsi from Rwanda. "Ethnic Cleansing"...what a term. It sounds so innocuous...like something you would find in the "ethnic" aisle at the grocery store along with hoisin sauce and gefilte fish. But it's mass murder, genocide...a pogrom, a holocaust to put it in terms that relate to the extermination of Jews under the Hitler regime.
Immaculee grew up in a home where, "Everyone was allowed in our home, regardless of race, religion or tribe. To [her] parents, being Hutu or Tutsi had nothing to do with the kind of person you were. If you were of good character and a kind human being, they greeted you with open arms." When asked to stand when her tribe was called out in her fourth grade class, Immaculee didn't even know to what tribe she belonged.
Amidst the terror and violence of the holocaust in 1994 while her parents allowed thousands of Tutsi to seek safety and the solace of togetherness camping on the land around their house, Immaculee was sent to the home of a local pastor who was Hutu and spent 3 months with seven other women, huddled in a hidden bathroom. As their benefactor struggled to keep their presence hidden, they dealt with starvation and the indignity of sharing a space that was not intended for their numbers. Besides the obvious physical discomfort, they spent their days in fear for their survival and uncertain of the fates of their loved ones.
Immaculee's story is at once touching and horrific. When we (in the U.S.) hear of tribal wars in Africa I think we visualize dark black painted faces, naked but for loincloths, carrying spears. When the word "genocide" is mentioned, it is soon forgotten in the wake of our own daily "struggles", the comfort of our safe existence and other ethical battles that we care about (the war in Iraq, the environment, the economic divide in our country, etc.)
I know that over the years as I have read about and seen movies about the Holocaust and Hitler, the questions that I have asked over and over again are, "Where was the U.S.? Why didn't we intervene earlier? Couldn't we have stopped it before the millions and millions of Jews were slaughtered?" So why are these questions not plaguing our country and our government when situations arise like the genocide in Rwanda?
Shirley outed me as a Democrat (an epithet my husband wishes I didn't wear with pride) last week when I wrote about the south Florida version of "Two Americas" in my Absurdity post. I'm sure it came as no major surprise to anyone. But here I am again...a proud liberal Democrat wishing that I could offset my cyncism with a dose of 60's peace and love naivete...questioning why we are in Iraq fighting to "protect the Iraqi people" from the crimes against humanity committed by Saddam Hussein's regime? Why didn't we step into Rwanda in 1994? Why are we not sending troops to Darfur today? Why do we not care about what is going on in Ituru, Eastern Congo? Actually, as I was looking into this, I found someone who says what I am thinking more articulately and with much more factual data here. I am neither stupid nor naive enough to believe that we, as a country, are always going to be leaders for the right actions for the right reasons...but I would like my children to live in a U.S. where they can proudly support our military and humanitarian actions because they are unequivocally (until this moment I had no idea that word did not have "b" in it!) "the right thing to do".
By the way, a documentary based on Immaculee's experiences is out on DVD and it is entitled, The Diary of Immaculee. I would suggest Hotel Rwanda as another movie that sheds light on aspects of the Rwandan holocaust.
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