Rwanda Blog

Write and post a brief review (500–1000 words) of the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch. Focus in particular on your reaction to the reading and on any changes you might make to the film Hotel Rwanda based on your reading of the book.

I'm not sure I would have ever watched Hotel Rwanda if I hadn't seen a Tutsi survivor on UNC-TV one night about a year ago. While watching a fund raising segment featuring Dr. Wayne Dyer, one of his guests was Immaculee Ilibagiza. The pictures on the right depict her and her family. She was the only survivor. The top photo shows Immaculee in 1994 after her ordeal ended and the bottom photo shows her husband and children, whom she now lives with in New York City.

Her story of surviving 91 days in the tiny bathroom of her pastor's house along with seven other women was as amazing as it was horrific. In these cramped quarters, they had almost nothing to eat, had to remain silent, and were forced to endure the sounds of death and dying surrounding their small place of refuge. How were normal bodily functions coped with and carried out among seven women? What kept just one of them from going mad thus revealing their presence to the militia that repeatedly searched the house in rigorous attempts to find them.

Immaculee wrote a book about her experience, Left to Tell, in which she shows "us how to embrace the power of prayer, forge a profound and lasting relationship with God, and discover the importance of forgiveness and the meaning of truly unconditional love and understanding—through our darkest hours." (http://www.lefttotell.com/book/index.php)

It was Immaculee's TV appearance that prompted my interest in the movie, Hotel Rwanda. I was glad to have opportunity, in this course, to view it again.

While I found Gourevitch's book a little bit difficult to follow, I think it is extremely well written. However, I don't think I could have followed the characters and the actions as well if I had not seen the movie first. Gourevitch does a brilliant job of not taking sides. He tells this story of genocide from both the side of the killers and those who are killed. I applaud his efforts to track down all the people he interviewed in order to write this book. The writer makes us chillingly aware that death (murder) is inevitable (doctors killed their patients, teachers killed their students, and neighbors killed their neighbors) On page 43 the question is asked, "What is a human being?" To which to answer is, "They had no understanding."

Gourevitch defines "they" by writing, "when Paul, a Hutu, set out to defy the killers, he did so by appealing to their passion for power: 'they' were the ones who had chosen to take life away and he grasped that that meant they (my emphasis) could also choose to extend the gift of retaining it" (129). I'm glad Gourevitch didn't focus extensively on Paul because we get a much broader perspective of what happened and didn't happen by seeing it through the eyes of so many. On the other hand, since the movie's focus is on Paul, I'm grateful that the book's author painted the picture of Paul in the same light as the movie.

One of the most compelling lines in the book is when Paul told Gourevitch, “During the genocide…I thought so many people did as I did, because I know if they’d wanted they could have done so” (141). Gourevitch makes it clear that the whole world, the Security Council, Washington, and the international community are "theys" as well. "Nkurunziza told me that in 1991 he had visited Washington. 'They didn't know there was a war in Rwanda...they didn't know of Rwanda.' I said, 'It's a little country next to Zaire.' They said, 'Where is Zaire?' Now, how can they say they know what happened in my country last year?" (263, all italics, my emphasis).

They: the murderers.

They: the ignorers.

They: the saviors.

Which "they" are we?

I would not change anything about the movie. It leaves us with a feeling of hope...the hope that finally an end to the awfulness is near.