Clemantine Wamariya

Clemantine Wamariya is a Rwandan-born storyteller and human rights advocate whose childhood was reshaped by armed conflict. In 1994, at six, she fled with her fifteen-year-old sister Claire and spent the next six years moving through seven African countries. The sisters were granted refugee status in America in 2000, when Wamariya was twelve. The Girl Who Smiled Beads, written with journalist Elizabeth Weil, recounts that displacement and her later effort to understand its lasting effects without reducing her life to a single public narrative. The title recalls an interactive story told by her childhood nanny, Mukamana, who invited the young Wamariya to decide what happened next. The memoir was longlisted for the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction.