“Say something happens - say a bird hits this window right here. You and I, we’re strangers in our strange costumes. We’ve come to this moment from different places. I might be terrified of the smash and the carnage, recoil as if the bird where a bomb. You might think I’m overreacting and say, it’s just a bird. What’s wrong with me? Or what’s wrong with you? If I don’t share with you my history, if I don’t explain what I brought with me to this moment in time – that to me the bird hitting the windows sounded like a shell detonating – then how could you know me? If I’m shaking, trying to bring myself back to objective reality, saying to myself. It’s a bird, right it’s a bird, right it’s a bird, right? And I don’t share with you my trauma, I alienate myself. I push you away. All the things that we do not say create not just space but a force field between us, a constant energetic pressure. Two people in pain are magnets, repelling each other. We cannot or will not reach across the space to connect.” - The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya @clemantine1 Easing back into social media after a sweet fun time in Paris This is the exact moment I finished this amazing memoir which I devoured while riding the maze that is the Paris metro. I finished it early morning on the balcony of the little flat we were staying in. It’s so intense and good. It offers an intimate and necessary account of the Rwandan massacre. This book tells the story of Clemantine and Clair, two sisters who fled the massacre as children ages 6 and 15, and spent six years wandering through seven African countries searching for safety, family, home. It is both heartbreaking and inspiring. Outside of Afrofuturism and Black Feminist text, Memoirs by Black women are quickly becoming my next favorite genre, I love the unique voice of each writer as they share all the gritty details of their lives, how they resist struggle and survive. It gives me tears and wings. It feels intimate and sacred. 🖤 #book #memoir #goodread #blackwomanauthor #blackbooks #blacklibrary #readingislife #springbreak #havebookwilltravel #thegirlwhosmiledbeads #freeblackwoman #bibliophiles #freeblackwomenslibrary