Rwandan Genocide in novel form

The Bellwether Prize is awarded biennially to the author of a previously unpublished novel that addresses issues of social justice and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships. I first became aware of the prize when I stumbled upon the 2006 winner, Hilary Jordan’s Mudbound which tells the story of two families– one white and one black – in rural, racist Mississippi just after the end of WWII. I highly recommend Mudbound to you. When I saw a new novel recently with the Bellwether Prize sticker on its cover, I bought the book without a moment’s hesitation because of my experience with Mudbound. I was not disappointed.

The most recent winner of the Bellwether Prize is Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron (Algonquin Books, 2012). The setting of this story is Rwanda from 1984 until 1998. The main character is Jean Patrick Nkuba, a Tutsi who dreams of being the first Rwandan to win an Olympic track medal. As you might guess, Jean Patrick must use his ability as a runner to save his own life once the genocide begins. Benaron begins her tale while Jean Patrick is a young schoolboy. She pulls the reader into the beauty of the Rwandan hills; the richness of the culture – the music, the folk wisdom, the food; and the complexity of the people and their politics. Benaron helped me to understand that the Rwandan genocide was much more complicated than Hutu versus Tutsi, and it did not just erupt suddenly in 1994. The characters in the novel are complex, as real people are; even minor characters are more fully developed than is typical.

Although she writes about genocide, Benaron has crafted a love story. The novel is suffused with Jean Patrick’s love for his family and friends, his love for Rwanda, and his love for Bea. The novel has many deaths, but it is very much about life and what makes it worth living. I encourage you to read it!

"Never Again" hasn't held up

Never again hasn’t held up. Eighteen years ago, I was a senior, preparing for graduation, eating at McDonald’s before going to my after school job. I can remember reading in the Kansas City Star articles about two tribes in Rwanda, the Hutu and Tutsi. It sticks out to me because it was so difficult in my mind to keep the two straight. This stays with me because I teach Rwanda in my Sociology class. Of all the genocides that the United States has failed to react to in time to prevent, this is the one that drives me. So, I share with you some text resources that I believe will help you better understand the conflict.

 

First off, in my opinion, the best overview piece on 20^th century genocide is by Samantha Power. Her book, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, is a chilling critique of America’s failures to take action to prevent genocides. Her sweep is incredible. Her first four chapters deal with the creation of the term genocide and the ramifications it should hold from a legal and government perspective. Once she has established the international role in identifying and prosecuting genocide through the United Nations, she delves into specific areas where the United States failed to act. If you teach genocide at all, you must read her first several chapters to fully appreciate the history of the term and the international response to the Holocaust.

Power’s chapter on Rwanda deals largely with the American bureaucracy and its attempt to shift responsibility. There is no hero in her book as the American government, still stinging from a media failure in Mogadishu, doesn’t properly address the issue in Rwanda. Her book does not provide one with an effective background and this chapter can be cumbersome to those seeking to personalize the actions. For a government course, though, her writing demonstrates the shaping of policy and the role of the bureaucracy in carrying out the action, or inaction, of a government and its leadership.

In contrast, Romeo Dallaire’s Shake Hands with the Devil is the story of a Canadian general put in command of the UN force sent to Rwanda to act as mediators of the peace accords (Arusha Agreement) that presaged the genocide. This book should not be read as an introduction to the genocide, but instead as a memoir and a personal journey of one unable to do enough. Dallaire’s memoir spends the first chapter building up his personal history and how he came to Africa. Another large portion of the book is dedicated to the politics played between the two sides as he attempts to build a government under the new agreement. Not until chapter ten do we read of the spark that ignites the powder keg that he has built for us. It is at this point that the memoir pays off and the reader realizes that all his words to this point were an attempt to build a picture and to cleanse his soul. This tale is deeply personal for the general and he makes it very clear how much of himself he put into the mission, but the real story is not about him. He does not ask for sympathy but his words ring with so many signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that one can’t cut his story out of his recounting. Rather than being a distanced critique of the events, the failures of governments to act and of a detached westerner, instead, this is the story of a proud man brought to his knees and crippled by his lack of ability to do his duty. This story cannot be taken in snippets. There is no section that can be lifted without losing the power of his entire ordeal. The book is over five-hundred pages, and at times can drag. But, it is also deeply personal. Put together with the book by Power, a westerner (First Worlder, North American, European) gains insight into the failures of man to take care of his brother. There is no rainbow at the end of either book and instead, both leave the reader feeling distraught and angry. Or they should.

The third selection, Philip Gourevitch’s We wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will be Killed with our Families, is a collection of stories told by a reporter who went to Rwanda a year after the genocide. He visits the sites of the massacre, tells the stories of the survivors, and personalizes the event, as best he can. He was not there when it happened. Instead, as a reporter, he enters and tells the story of the Rwanda that survived. Not an easy read, and again, he lays the out responsibility for continuing failures on the major western powers, especially the United States. With this book at the end of the other two, one gains as close as one can get to a full perspective of the events. It’s interesting that all three are written by westerners for westerners.

 

Personally, I don’t like highly personalized stories. It has never been my interest to read biographies. That continues through this final story. As a Catholic school teacher, though, I must offer up two more books that shed light on the Rwanda genocide, and I would only recommend these after reading at least one of the previous three I have mentioned. You must have a big picture perspective of the events in Rwanda before attempting to tackle personalized stories of those in it.

Left to Tell is the story of Immaculée Ilibagiza and her survival in a bathroom protected by a family. Her story is very much a tale of her religious devotion and a faith journey. The Catholic bishops in the United States have been quick to sweep her up as a face of faith. Rwanda was approximately 95% Christian when the genocide broke out. This crime was committed not by outsiders but by self-identified believers.

Only after understanding fully the overview of the genocide in Rwanda, and the role of religion in the region, should one chance to pick up Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches. This book is a collection of essays from different authors dealing with the role of religion in the genocide. This is not an easy read, both because of its scholarly nature, but also because it demands questions be asked of the faithful that are not comfortable. Too often we have a tendency to cut off those who don’t agree with us. It is too easy to deny their faith, and claim that ours is the correct one. Too often, we separate ourselves from the perpetrators reflexively, but this book challenges a very deep tenet. Does religion make us a better person? Do we shift responsibility for our actions too often to a higher power (god) and to what consequences? It would be too easy to write off the Rwanda genocide as crazy Africans - child-like primitives, Christians in name only (rote, cafeteria, surface), or some other schema that makes them “the other”.

How many Rwandan lives are worth one American life? That is a good question, because 800,000 Rwandans died while no Americans did. I go back to the Primo Levi poem, Shema. “Whether it be a curse or a question, there is no question that it is a call to action that too many of us ignore.”

New Lesson Plans

The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education is pleased to announce the addition of several new lesson plans to it's website at www.mchekc.org/lessonplans. Written by members of the Isak Federman Holocaust Teaching Cadre, these lessons explore relevant connections between the Holocaust and at least one other modern genocide. The lessons added to date are:

·         Bystanders in the Holocaust and Rwanda
This lesson explores testimony of bystanders to the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide. It encourages students to understand what it means to be a bystander and to refrain from being one in the future.

·         Document Based Question on Resistance in the Holocaust and Rwanda
This document based question explores resistance in both the Holocaust and Rwanda. It is designed to allow students to practice all the necessary DBQ skills while learning about the Holocaust. Approaches to deconstructing the DBQ and utilizing the documents in other settings are explored.

·         Children's Genocide Diaries - Bitton-Jackson and Zlata's Diaries
Utilizing the memoir I Have Lived A Thousand Years (Holocaust) and Zlata's Diary (Bosnia), this lesson plan allows students to analyze and explore the impact of genocide on children.

·         Children's Genocide Diaries - Sierakowiak and Zlata's Diaries
Utilizing The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak (Holocaust) and Zlata's Diary (Bosnia), this lesson plan allows students to analyze and explore the impact of genocide on children.

·         Children of Genocide: Communicating Through Art
This lesson plan helps students analyze art created by children during the Holocaust and the genocide in Darfur.

·         Connecting a Holocaust Memoir Study to Modern Genocides
This lesson plan helps students make relevant connections amongst genocides by utilizing first hand testimony of genocide survivors and witnesses at the conclusion of any Holocaust memoir study.

·         Propaganda in the Holocaust and Rwanda
This unit explores propaganda utilized by a variety of media outlets in both the Holocaust and Rwanda. It was specifically designed to help middle school students learn about the elements of propaganda and their effective use, but has wide applications in high school and history settings.

Witness to Genocide: The Children of Rwanda

In a recent class (one of a series sponsored by MCHE entitled Relating the Holocaust to Other Genocides: A Seminar Series for Educators), a fellow cadre member Dianne O’Bryan shared drawings from Witness to Genocide. I had been preparing a lesson for the class comparing/contrasting the artwork of children from Terezin with the artwork of children from Darfur. I decided to explore the children’s art from Rwanda as shown in this book.

As a middle school English teacher, I looked for resources that were engaging, historically relevant, and easily adapted for use in one or two class periods to enhance our study of the Holocaust. Witness to Genocide provides two short introductory pieces, one by Hillary Clinton and one by Richard Salem, that can be used to generate student discussion about the importance of sharing the story of the genocide in Rwanda and to show how art can be used as testimony and healing.

The three main sections in the book (The Genocide, The Children, and The Future of Rwanda) tell the history of the genocide the effects of trauma on children, and the importance of remembering as these children face the future. The captioned artwork supplements the text and acts as witness testimony and a healing process for the children. The simple, yet powerful drawings will engage those who see them and will encourage students to learn about the past and ways to help secure a better future for these children and other victims of traumatic experiences.

Witness to Genocide is available in the resource center at MCHE. Supporting lesson plans can be found at http://www.mchekc.org/lessonplans.

Extending your unit to talk about the Rwandan Genocide

In 2005, I was looking for a movie to watch at Blockbuster. There was a case on the bottom shelf that caught my eye. I picked it up, read a little, and took it home. I watched it alone, on a Friday night, and couldn’t look away. Sometimes in April is an overview of the Rwanda genocide, told in a didactic format jumping between 1994 and 2004. When I first watched it, there were no major Hollywood stars to distract me. I grew up well after Debra Winger had peaked. In 2011, Idris Elba did a season of The Office, but still plays his role so convincingly, that you lose yourself in him. Without recognizable stars, you can truly focus on the story.

Having watched Hotel Rwanda, and having read up on the genocide from different perspectives, I felt I understood the man on the ground story of the genocide. Sometimes in April goes so far beyond that. Our protagonist is a Hutu married to a Tutsi. The use of the radio to spread propaganda and enlist the masses is explored effectively. The relationship of Rwanda to other nations, including France, Belgium, the United States, and China is also explored in this film.

Sometimes does a great job of covering all of the big details of the genocide. It is critical that any instructor choosing to show this film does some research on the events of the genocide. This movie does an incredible job of covering all the major aspects of the Rwanda from a macro perspective. Doing some research into the background, the American reaction to the killings, and the United Nations reactions will allow a viewer to extend the lessons further.

Rwanda was a society divided between two major tribes: Hutu and Tutsi. The movie does a good job of explaining the historical complications between the two, caused in large part by European colonial powers. The ongoing conflict in Rwanda is discussed, and the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), a militia force in exile, attempting to drive the Hutu heavy government out. The role of Belgium and France in allowing weapons (machetes) to be imported from China in incredible numbers, providing support to the government in power, and providing refuge to the government when things went south are all documented. Rwanda was 95% Christian at the time of the genocide, and the role of the churches in the genocide are touched on. American news stories covering cultural events of the day are contrasted with the escalating violence in Rwanda. The internal debates at the Department of State are explored. The International Court Tribunals in Arusha present both the positive and negative of Europeans in Rwanda. As the RPF enters and the massacres die down, the attempt to prosecute the criminals and the attempt to move forward as a nation are shown. Graphically, this movie is fairly tame, but psychologically, it takes the viewer to a much heavier level.

What makes this film so powerful is that it does not leave you feeling uplifted. In the end, 800,000 people were killed. Paul Rusesabagina did all he could to save so many, but at the end of Hotel Rwanda, one feels a sense of relief that he saved so many. At the end of Sometimes in April, you don’t get to walk away feeling satiated. Questions the movie raises are answered, but it is a bitter pill. The inaction of the American government during the genocide, and the further failure to stop the perpetrators from fleeing into refugee camps in neighboring countries raises new questions. This makes an incredible wrap up to a study of the Rwanda genocide and America’s current involvement in Libya and the Ivory Coast. Paul Kagame, leader of the RPF as they entered in 1994, was just reelected for a second seven-year term as president of Rwanda. This is still an incredibly current issue, that has wide ranging extensions in current events.

When we begin our studies, I read aloud, and discuss the meaning behind Primo Levi’s poem, “Shema”. I think this is a powerful tool to create a sense of urgency in the students. We must not allow this to happen again. I end the poem by telling them that they can no longer claim ignorance, and that it is now on them to be active and involved in world issues. Gregory Stanton’s “Eight Stages of Genocide” is available in a slideshow format, as well, and a great asset to anyone with the time to teach genocide issues. We have a limited amount of time to spend in the classroom on genocide, but it is incredibly topical. As we grow into a global community, we must be aware that our neighbors are no longer so far away. With the news out of the Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and Egypt, we must not turn our eyes away. Instead, we must seek out information from a neutral source, and call on our politicians to do what is right and just. We must act morally and ethically, and not shy away from the hard choices. American presidents should be held to a foreign policy standard by an educated voting population, and that becomes our responsibility. An educated population should determine if American foreign policy should extend to humanitarian action or if American military force should only be used in the defense of tangible American interests. As for me, it would seem to be in our best interest, as the most powerful nation on Earth, to stand up for the meek, and act in a just way. American failure in Rwanda jeopardizes future American actions. We must never forget.