Clemantine Wamariya

"Safety should be a birthright"

Clemantine Wamariya fled war-torn Rwanda with her older sister Claire in 1994, when she was just six years old. In 2018, she published the New York Times bestselling book The Girl Who Smiled Beads depicting her journey to America seeking refuge. This week, Reshma and Clemantine discuss the human side of war and the immense consequences of family separation. Follow her journey on Twitter and Instagram at @clemantine1, and learn more about her book at http://bit.ly/GirlWhoSmiledBeads--- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/bravenotperfect/message

Clemantine Wamariya is a storyteller and writer. She first burst onto the scene with an appearance on the Oprah Show in 2006, where she was reunited with her family after the Rwandan genocide. In her new memoir, "The Girl Who Smiled Beads," she dives into reclaiming the narrative around her identity, her love of stories and Afro-centrism.

This week’s episode is a must listen! Barry and Lucas have a profoundly moving, insightful and funny conversation with Clemantine Wamariya. She’s an author, a speaker, and a human rights ambassador who worked with the Obama administration, and we talk with her about her new book, “The Girl Who Smiled Beads.” It’s an incredible book (AVAILABLE NOW) which deals with her experience with atrocity as a child in Rwanda and then her life after as a refugee in the United States. We talk about the importance of language, of why it’s always better to be “us” people, why we should all be living our best lives, and why Oprah and Ellen should have a tv show together with dancing! Also Lucas mispronounces Elie Wiesel’s name! What a dummy!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2006, 12 years after they had fled the Rwandan genocide, 18-year-old Clemantine Wamariya and her older sister were reunited with the rest of their family live on US TV on the Oprah Winfrey show. On today's podcast, Clemantine speaks to Róisín Ingle about her memoir, The Girl Who Smiled Beads, which describes a childhood brutally disrupted by the genocide in 1994.