Reading We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch was definitely not fun despite it being very well written. My regular reading time is just before going to bed but this book kept me awake and horrified at what we humans can become.
I can’t describe the feelings of reading about the genocide of 800,000 people and realizing that the world looked on and did nothing. The Holocaust is too far back in the past for me, but the Rwandan genocide happened during my adult years. What should we have done? What could we do? Why didn’t we? All these questions were brought to life once more.
The “racial science” of the imperialist West of the late 19th century is once again shown clearly to be the fraud and bigotry it was.
The French Government also came off pretty badly in their handling of the genocide.
If there is one fault with this book, it is that the author is a bit too trusting of President Kagame of Rwanda and President Museveni of Uganda.
I’ve never read this book. You remind me, though, that I need to review the DVD of Hotel Rwanda at some point.
People living in other parts of the world (Asia, America, Europe, Australia etc) should have been more vocal at the time. 🙁
When Victims Become Killers
This is an academic book looking in detail at the history of Rwanda and its neighbors and how that led to the 1994 genocide. Despite being difficult to read due to dry writing, I recommend it highly.