The Girl Who Smiled Beads begins in Rwanda during the Rwandan Civil War, when Wamariya was six years old. Alongside her sister Claire, Wamariya fled Rwanda, spending the next six years traveling through seven African countries as refugees. In 2000, the Wamariya sisters were granted asylum in the United States, and they landed in Chicago, unsettled. Although Wamariya spoke five languages, she did not speak English, and at twelve years old, she had never attended school formally. The Girl Who Smiled Beads showcases how, even after being granted asylum, refugees often do not feel settled and struggle to find their way in a new country.
Beyond popular media outlets, The Girl Who Smiled Beads has been discussed in academic contexts, including The Lancet,[13]Roots International Journal of Multidisciplinary Researches,[14] and Journal of the Campus Read.[15][16][17][18]
^Hertzel, Laurie (July 6, 2018). "Review: 'The Girl Who Smiled Beads,' by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil". Star Tribune. Retrieved 2021-12-22. Memoirs by immigrants and refugees are growing in number; they are important stories that need to be told, and told in the kind of bug-and-mud-and-dysentery detail that Wamariya's is told.
^"The Girl Who Smiled Beads". Kirkus Reviews. February 20, 2018. Retrieved 2021-12-22. Not quite as attention-getting as memoirs by Ismail Beah or Scholastique Mukasonga, but a powerful record of the refugee experience all the same.
^Hulbert, Ann (2018-04-24). "'The Girl Who Smiled Beads' Is a Revelatory Memoir of Survival". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-12-22. The fractured form of her own narrative—deftly toggling between her African and American odysseys—gives troubled memory its dark due. Healing does not spell an end to hurting.
