Things I'm Reading

I have so many thoughts after finishing Immaculee’s memoir. 

I went into this book thinking I knew a fair amount about the Rwandan genocide. She showed me I was very wrong. There’s something more striking, heartbreaking, and terrifying about a firsthand account. She doesn’t shy away from details, explaining how her family was cut into pieces and describing the corpses that lay everywhere. These details were so vivid and haunting to me that I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like to live this. 

It’s largely a telling of faith; how her faith and strength came from God, which is difficult for me to understand. I do believe in God. I also believe in the ability of humans to rise above and have strength from within themselves. It’s no secret that people turn to faith or find it in times of hardship, but Immaculee clings to her. She considers it the reason she has survived. To have that much faith in something, that amount of forgiveness and strength is so foreign to me, which is one of the many reasons I will forever admire this woman. 

She’s speaking at my college tomorrow night and I’m quite anxious to see her now. Immaculee not only survived the unthinkable, but she forgave those that caused it as well.