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I tuoi figli ovunque dispersi
Nel 1994 la guerra civile etnica tra hutu e tutsi in Ruanda tocca il suo punto culminante. Due popoli che parlano la stessa lingua e hanno gli stessi usi si scannano senza pietà nell’indifferenza, se non con la connivenza, dell’Occidente. Si calcola che in poco più di tre mesi il genocidio dei tutsi ad opera degli hutu abbia portato alla morte di un milione di persone. Blanche è figlia di uomo francese e di una donna tutsi. Miracolosamente scampata al genocidio, vive in Francia. Il padre è scomparso. Nel 1997, quando torna in Ruanda per la prima volta dopo i massacri, si trova davanti uno spettacolo desolante, un paese devastato, ferite ancora aperte che stentano a rimarginarsi. La casa è stata saccheggiata. La madre è sopravvissuta in modo rocambolesco, ma è sconvolta, quasi non parla. Il fratello, figlio di un altro padre di etnia hutu, ha combattuto nella guerra di liberazione, è passato attraverso gli orrori e il sangue, ha disturbi psichici. Blanche intraprende allora un lungo lavoro di riparazione della famiglia lacerata, un minuzioso rammendo degli affetti, delle cose che sono state taciute e della memoria che lei affronta divisa tra Butare, la città ruandese dov’è nata e cresciuta e dove vive il poco che rimane della sua famiglia, e Bordeaux, dove nel frattempo si è sposata, ha avuto un figlio e lavora come infermiera.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2019
47 people are currently reading
2720 people want to read
About the author
Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse
16 books31 followersBeata Umubyeyi Mairesse was born in Rwanda in 1979. She survived the genocide against the Tutsi people and in 1994 moved to France, where she still lives, to study political science. She has published novels and poetry.
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April 25, 2023
Longlisted for PEN America Translation Prize 2023
Finalist for the 2023 French-American Foundation Translation Prize
Audiobook beautifully narrated by Nene Nwoko
Translated from French by Alison Anderson
I read this novel following its longlisting to the PEN America Translation Prize. The novel is set in the aftermath of Rwanda genocide and it presents the life of a family. The story is told from the point of view of the mother, the daughter who emigrates to France, the shell-shocked only surviving son and, later, the daughter’s son. I loved the changing in the narrative voices and the poetic stream of consciousness prose. It is a novel about love, war, loss, hope and alienation. Beautiful.
Finalist for the 2023 French-American Foundation Translation Prize
Audiobook beautifully narrated by Nene Nwoko
Translated from French by Alison Anderson
I read this novel following its longlisting to the PEN America Translation Prize. The novel is set in the aftermath of Rwanda genocide and it presents the life of a family. The story is told from the point of view of the mother, the daughter who emigrates to France, the shell-shocked only surviving son and, later, the daughter’s son. I loved the changing in the narrative voices and the poetic stream of consciousness prose. It is a novel about love, war, loss, hope and alienation. Beautiful.
September 30, 2023
RIPARARE I VIVENTI
Beata diventa Blanche - che poi in Francia si farà chiamare più spesso Barbara – il racconto autobiografico è lampante, trasparente, curiosa questa scelta di un nome diverso ma molto simile.
A volte parla Blanche, sotto forma di lettere mai spedite alla madre (e ci sarebbero anche quelle al padre mai conosciuto), a volte invece è Immaculata, la sua “Mama”, a farlo. Altre volte interviene un narratore, o narratrice, che prende in mano il racconto.
E la vicenda va avanti e indietro tra Rwanda e Francia, dove la meticcia – Blanche è figlia di madre rwandese e padre francese – arriva da adolescente al termine di quei tre mesi di orrore.
E va avanti tra presente e passato, quando più remoto quando più prossimo, abbracciando almeno tre decenni, e anche più.
Superato l’eccesso di lirismo, il profluvio di jacaranda, la ripetuta elegia d’ali di uccello, che secondo me già il titolo lascia presagire, quando si comincia ad azzannare la storia, il libro di Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse si fa davvero interessante. E non credo che questo succeda solo per me, che del genocidio dei tutsi ho letto e sentito e visto e appreso e ragionato a più riprese.
Certo, saperne un po’ su quei fatti, essere addentro a quella storia almeno un pochino, aiuta: perché Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse li dà per scontati, a quasi trent’anni giustamente non pensa di dover ripercorrere tutto, dal principio alla fine.
I cani dopo aver corso tutto il giorno si mettono a dormire con la pancia piena di un banchetto umano che non dimenticheranno tanto presto. Presto diventeranno selvatici, cominceranno ad azzannare pure la carne viva, quella che si muove, perché ormai hanno capito che non ci sono più confini tra gli animali e i loro padroni.
Furono ammazzate circa un milione di persone (perlopiù tutsi, ma non solo: anche molti di quelli che non erano disposti ad ammazzarli). Spesso all’arma bianca. I corpi restavano per strada, diventavano mucchi. I cani ritornavano lupi: prima hanno cominciato a nutrirsi di cadaveri, poi sono diventati pericolosi anche per i vivi.
La mattanza duro cento giorni, dalla sera del 6 aprile al 15 luglio 1994. La madre fu previdente, affidò la figlia agli occidentali che abbandonarono subito il paese (l’operazione italiana si chiamò Silverback, come i gorilla più anziani a capo del branco – primo governo papibanana): Blanche lasciò il Rwanda ad aprile ed emigrò in Francia nel luglio dello stesso anno. Lei di anni ne aveva quindici.
Marie-Guillemine Benoist: Portrait d’une negresse (1800).
Su questo tragico sfondo storico - che ebbe svariate anticipazioni, con questo intendendo precedenti stragi a danno dei tutsi che infatti iniziarono già dagli anni Sessanta a emigrare, principalmente al nord nel limitrofo Uganda – Beata/Blanche ci racconta una storia familiare alquanto intricata, e forse proprio per questo perfino più avvincente.
La madre è in parte hutu, in parte tutsi- ciò nonostante durante il genocidio si dovette nascondere in una specie di buco per tutti i cento giorni e affidarsi al buon cuore del vicino hutu – che probabilmente la rifocillava di notte mentre di giorno si dava alla carneficina, se non altro per non essere additato come connivente e quindi eliminato. Occorre forse dire che hutu e tutsi (e twa, alias pigmei) sono distinzioni etniche introdotte a forza dai colonizzatori belgi (missionari soprattutto): in realtà si tratta di differenze di classe sociale – per il resto, lingua, religione, amori, è stato un perenne mescolarsi, incrociarsi, sposarsi.
Immaculate, la “Mama” di Blanche, si innamora di un francese che ha un ristorante. Nasce Blanche. Ma il francese deve lasciare il paese perché perseguitato da un nemico che lavora al governo: trattasi di un precedente fidanzato di Immaculate. Perso l’uomo bianco, Immaculate ritorna con il vecchio amore Damascene, e nasce Bosco. Ma anche Damascene fa una brutta fine essendo troppo moderato nei confronti dei tutsi: arrestato, morirà in carcere. Il figlio Bosco non lo conoscerà mai.
E quindi, due fratellastri, Blanche e Bosco, che non incontrano mai il proprio padre.
Blanche, s’è detto, allo scoppio del genocidio, viene messa in salvo e approda a Bordeaux. Ma il padre, il francese, è già morto, non potrà contare su nessun aiuto.
Bosco si unirà all’esercito di opposizione, il FPL, quelli che vinceranno la guerra, metteranno fine al genocidio e libereranno il paese. Poi partecipa anche alla guerra in Congo.
L’aspetto che colpisce forse di più è il diffuso senso di colpa. I sopravvissuti si sentono in colpa in quanto tali, in quanto non sono morti. Anche Blanche prova colpa per essersi salvata all’estero. Senso di colpa che spinge qualcuno ad alzare la mano su di sé, come hanno insegnato Jean Améry, Primo Levi e altri. Non basta rischiare la vita: averla conservata diventa una colpa, un peso del quale è difficile liberarsi.
Museo Reale dell’Africa Centrale a Tervuren, alle porte di Bruxelles.
Beata diventa Blanche - che poi in Francia si farà chiamare più spesso Barbara – il racconto autobiografico è lampante, trasparente, curiosa questa scelta di un nome diverso ma molto simile.
A volte parla Blanche, sotto forma di lettere mai spedite alla madre (e ci sarebbero anche quelle al padre mai conosciuto), a volte invece è Immaculata, la sua “Mama”, a farlo. Altre volte interviene un narratore, o narratrice, che prende in mano il racconto.
E la vicenda va avanti e indietro tra Rwanda e Francia, dove la meticcia – Blanche è figlia di madre rwandese e padre francese – arriva da adolescente al termine di quei tre mesi di orrore.
E va avanti tra presente e passato, quando più remoto quando più prossimo, abbracciando almeno tre decenni, e anche più.
Superato l’eccesso di lirismo, il profluvio di jacaranda, la ripetuta elegia d’ali di uccello, che secondo me già il titolo lascia presagire, quando si comincia ad azzannare la storia, il libro di Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse si fa davvero interessante. E non credo che questo succeda solo per me, che del genocidio dei tutsi ho letto e sentito e visto e appreso e ragionato a più riprese.
Certo, saperne un po’ su quei fatti, essere addentro a quella storia almeno un pochino, aiuta: perché Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse li dà per scontati, a quasi trent’anni giustamente non pensa di dover ripercorrere tutto, dal principio alla fine.
I cani dopo aver corso tutto il giorno si mettono a dormire con la pancia piena di un banchetto umano che non dimenticheranno tanto presto. Presto diventeranno selvatici, cominceranno ad azzannare pure la carne viva, quella che si muove, perché ormai hanno capito che non ci sono più confini tra gli animali e i loro padroni.
Furono ammazzate circa un milione di persone (perlopiù tutsi, ma non solo: anche molti di quelli che non erano disposti ad ammazzarli). Spesso all’arma bianca. I corpi restavano per strada, diventavano mucchi. I cani ritornavano lupi: prima hanno cominciato a nutrirsi di cadaveri, poi sono diventati pericolosi anche per i vivi.
La mattanza duro cento giorni, dalla sera del 6 aprile al 15 luglio 1994. La madre fu previdente, affidò la figlia agli occidentali che abbandonarono subito il paese (l’operazione italiana si chiamò Silverback, come i gorilla più anziani a capo del branco – primo governo papibanana): Blanche lasciò il Rwanda ad aprile ed emigrò in Francia nel luglio dello stesso anno. Lei di anni ne aveva quindici.
Marie-Guillemine Benoist: Portrait d’une negresse (1800).
Su questo tragico sfondo storico - che ebbe svariate anticipazioni, con questo intendendo precedenti stragi a danno dei tutsi che infatti iniziarono già dagli anni Sessanta a emigrare, principalmente al nord nel limitrofo Uganda – Beata/Blanche ci racconta una storia familiare alquanto intricata, e forse proprio per questo perfino più avvincente.
La madre è in parte hutu, in parte tutsi- ciò nonostante durante il genocidio si dovette nascondere in una specie di buco per tutti i cento giorni e affidarsi al buon cuore del vicino hutu – che probabilmente la rifocillava di notte mentre di giorno si dava alla carneficina, se non altro per non essere additato come connivente e quindi eliminato. Occorre forse dire che hutu e tutsi (e twa, alias pigmei) sono distinzioni etniche introdotte a forza dai colonizzatori belgi (missionari soprattutto): in realtà si tratta di differenze di classe sociale – per il resto, lingua, religione, amori, è stato un perenne mescolarsi, incrociarsi, sposarsi.
Immaculate, la “Mama” di Blanche, si innamora di un francese che ha un ristorante. Nasce Blanche. Ma il francese deve lasciare il paese perché perseguitato da un nemico che lavora al governo: trattasi di un precedente fidanzato di Immaculate. Perso l’uomo bianco, Immaculate ritorna con il vecchio amore Damascene, e nasce Bosco. Ma anche Damascene fa una brutta fine essendo troppo moderato nei confronti dei tutsi: arrestato, morirà in carcere. Il figlio Bosco non lo conoscerà mai.
E quindi, due fratellastri, Blanche e Bosco, che non incontrano mai il proprio padre.
Blanche, s’è detto, allo scoppio del genocidio, viene messa in salvo e approda a Bordeaux. Ma il padre, il francese, è già morto, non potrà contare su nessun aiuto.
Bosco si unirà all’esercito di opposizione, il FPL, quelli che vinceranno la guerra, metteranno fine al genocidio e libereranno il paese. Poi partecipa anche alla guerra in Congo.
L’aspetto che colpisce forse di più è il diffuso senso di colpa. I sopravvissuti si sentono in colpa in quanto tali, in quanto non sono morti. Anche Blanche prova colpa per essersi salvata all’estero. Senso di colpa che spinge qualcuno ad alzare la mano su di sé, come hanno insegnato Jean Améry, Primo Levi e altri. Non basta rischiare la vita: averla conservata diventa una colpa, un peso del quale è difficile liberarsi.
Museo Reale dell’Africa Centrale a Tervuren, alle porte di Bruxelles.
September 15, 2024
What prevents physical oppression from transforming into spiritual degradation? “ All Your Children, Scattered” grapples with this question by focusing on how one family was impacted by Rwandan genocide. Their history encompasses rifts, survival and healing. Their stories alternate and swirl through time in a stream of conversations and cadence that is both choral and poetic in tone.
Three voices weave together attempting to cope with the trauma unleashed by the one hundred days of genocide that occurred in 1994. Three generations are consumed with introspection, haltingly dealing with the effects of violence that has been rooted in the longstanding tentacles of colonialism.
The suffering of a nation is revealed through the thoughts of Blanche, Immaculata and Stokely.Blanche, a mixed race woman, carries much of the conversation. Her point of view intersperses with her mother Immaculata,a Tutsi survivor of Hutu violence, and with Blanche’s son Stokely. Each family member has a unique perspective of their history and identity based on differing geography and culture.
Blanche, the child of her black mother and an unmet white father, escaped to France just before the civil war. She built a life in Bordeaux with her mixed race Martinican husband and their son.Immaculata remained in Rwanda and survived the horror by hiding in the basement of a Hutu neighbor. After the war, she has cloaked herself in silence, having endured the loss of a son. Having returned to her homeland after a decades long absence, Blanche encounters a disconnect in her emotional and verbal relationship with her mother. Immaculata observes that,” Silence is a defensive weapon, cold and smooth, which a woman can use her whole life long against men, against her progeny, against herself.It is a prison without walls.”
Both women are hemmed into silent prisons but have arrived there by different paths.Immaculata is a product of Belgian colonial rule which attempted to obliterate Rwandan language and culture. This legacy fractured Immaculata’s identity, instilling a sense of outersiderness in her psyche.Blanche copes with the same demons filtered through racial ambiguity and diasporic experience. In France she is perceived as black.In Rwanda, she is often mistaken for white. Both women also haltingly attempt to connect with Stokely, who was raised abroad and deplores from afar the colonial race classifications that ravaged Rwanda.
The conversations of the three generations explore history, identity and personal goals. Their dialogue becomes cathartic and reveals how words and foundational stories promote healing and connections, dispelling trauma and promoting rapprochement.Their voices become a paean to the power of communication and connecting with one’s roots. In this way, both individuals and societies can begin to ameliorate trauma and start to restore their ruptured spirits.
Three voices weave together attempting to cope with the trauma unleashed by the one hundred days of genocide that occurred in 1994. Three generations are consumed with introspection, haltingly dealing with the effects of violence that has been rooted in the longstanding tentacles of colonialism.
The suffering of a nation is revealed through the thoughts of Blanche, Immaculata and Stokely.Blanche, a mixed race woman, carries much of the conversation. Her point of view intersperses with her mother Immaculata,a Tutsi survivor of Hutu violence, and with Blanche’s son Stokely. Each family member has a unique perspective of their history and identity based on differing geography and culture.
Blanche, the child of her black mother and an unmet white father, escaped to France just before the civil war. She built a life in Bordeaux with her mixed race Martinican husband and their son.Immaculata remained in Rwanda and survived the horror by hiding in the basement of a Hutu neighbor. After the war, she has cloaked herself in silence, having endured the loss of a son. Having returned to her homeland after a decades long absence, Blanche encounters a disconnect in her emotional and verbal relationship with her mother. Immaculata observes that,” Silence is a defensive weapon, cold and smooth, which a woman can use her whole life long against men, against her progeny, against herself.It is a prison without walls.”
Both women are hemmed into silent prisons but have arrived there by different paths.Immaculata is a product of Belgian colonial rule which attempted to obliterate Rwandan language and culture. This legacy fractured Immaculata’s identity, instilling a sense of outersiderness in her psyche.Blanche copes with the same demons filtered through racial ambiguity and diasporic experience. In France she is perceived as black.In Rwanda, she is often mistaken for white. Both women also haltingly attempt to connect with Stokely, who was raised abroad and deplores from afar the colonial race classifications that ravaged Rwanda.
The conversations of the three generations explore history, identity and personal goals. Their dialogue becomes cathartic and reveals how words and foundational stories promote healing and connections, dispelling trauma and promoting rapprochement.Their voices become a paean to the power of communication and connecting with one’s roots. In this way, both individuals and societies can begin to ameliorate trauma and start to restore their ruptured spirits.
December 15, 2023
I heard the author speak at AKE LITERARY FESTIVAL and I had to go purchase her book. Truly a moving story about mother-daughter relationship and what it means to be othered.
December 29, 2022
It's very tough for me to give feedback for this novel. My thoughts are conflicted. The poetic nature of the writing is a choice that for me completely obliterated the realities of the Rwandan civil war. I'm struggling with it. It has made me consider the ways people heal from such senseless horrific personal and historical events. To survive they need to focus solely on their own experiences, maybe, and to conquer incomprehensible past evils with a mixture of beauty and forgetting. The stories here are so personal. It's a novel about the aftermath of great destruction, where the characters are uneasily building stepping stones back to one another, and are rebuilding lives as best they can. Besides the elegant writing itself I admire the quiet ways Mairesse confronts the schisms within communities and even within families, in a country where members of the community of slaughterers and the surviving community of the slaughtered need to learn once more to be neighbors. This isn't necessarily a 5 star read for me in terms of enjoyment. I'm not going to diss a novel about a genocide that is so sincerely and carefully written, even if it sometimes wasn't exactly to my reading tastes.
October 13, 2022
Tous les enfants dispersés is Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse’s debut fiction novel charting the intergenerational effects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide against Tutsis within a family. Published originally in French and winning multiple French literary awards, Europa Editions has now released an English translation All Your Children, Scattered with Alison Anderson as translator. My thanks to Europa and Netgalley for providing a digital ARC in exchange for unbiased review.
Reading the mother's Nyirakiragi/Immaculata's narrative, it's striking that there's been pogroms against the Tutsis before, in 1959 and 1973. She recalls her father giving their Hutu neighbour a cow for helping them during the 1959 killings but notes with bitterness that this neighbour's sons would go on to participate in the 1994 massacre of their family members. It's interpersonal details and debts like that which add to the horrific surreal nightmare: a Hutu school headmaster is killed by his pupils in 1994 for refusing to give up his Tutsi mother and maternal uncles already affected from the 1973 pogrom, his widow beseeches Immaculata in 1997 to tell her son Bosco to remember the headmaster's kindness in covering up his joining of the rebel army and not to kill her relatives in Zaire.
Kinyarwanda phrases and proverbs are a strong feature and a repository of knowledge passed down from mother to daughter. Their relationship is prickly and stonewalled by Immaculata's silence.
What would happen if we literally began speaking, voicing our boundless desire for abortion, our exhausted desire for forbidden pleasure, our burning desire for absolute power? What would have happened if, instead of opening only my belly, the doctor had opened all of me, laid bare my heart, and my throat, so aptly referred to as umutemeli w’ishavu, the lid of sorrow?
And whenever I tried to begin to tell you, my sentences dissolved into unavoidable ellipses, lost in the memory of a trauma I could not bring myself to pass on to you. I thought I was protecting you. I hanged myself on my tongue.
Silence is a recurring theme, from the names given (Nyirakiragi - 'the silent one' to grandson being inadvertently named Kunuma-'remain absolutely silent') to being forbidden to speak Kinyarwanda by French nuns when Immaculata is in secondary school to when she stops speaking . Her son Bosco too is silent about the horrors he witnessed after joining the Inkotanyi in 1991 at seventeen and returning to his ravaged town to find his mother emaciated hiding in the basement of a bookstore.
What detracted for me was the drama reveal of the baby daddies and closing romanticization of biracial offspring. There's also a vigorous discussion of who has the right to tell the story of the genocide.
When every letter is traced with a drop of your own blood, you don’t go pointlessly flaunting yourself, you learn to fill the blank spaces with eloquent gazes. It’s a question of decency, make of it what you will. People who write about us, those who seek to transcribe our silences, without knowing the score: they sometimes lack good manners. I won’t let him transform you into fodder for fiction.
All your children scattered, on earth as in the sky, we are here today.
3.5 ⭐️
Reading the mother's Nyirakiragi/Immaculata's narrative, it's striking that there's been pogroms against the Tutsis before, in 1959 and 1973. She recalls her father giving their Hutu neighbour a cow for helping them during the 1959 killings but notes with bitterness that this neighbour's sons would go on to participate in the 1994 massacre of their family members. It's interpersonal details and debts like that which add to the horrific surreal nightmare: a Hutu school headmaster is killed by his pupils in 1994 for refusing to give up his Tutsi mother and maternal uncles already affected from the 1973 pogrom, his widow beseeches Immaculata in 1997 to tell her son Bosco to remember the headmaster's kindness in covering up his joining of the rebel army and not to kill her relatives in Zaire.
Kinyarwanda phrases and proverbs are a strong feature and a repository of knowledge passed down from mother to daughter. Their relationship is prickly and stonewalled by Immaculata's silence.
What would happen if we literally began speaking, voicing our boundless desire for abortion, our exhausted desire for forbidden pleasure, our burning desire for absolute power? What would have happened if, instead of opening only my belly, the doctor had opened all of me, laid bare my heart, and my throat, so aptly referred to as umutemeli w’ishavu, the lid of sorrow?
And whenever I tried to begin to tell you, my sentences dissolved into unavoidable ellipses, lost in the memory of a trauma I could not bring myself to pass on to you. I thought I was protecting you. I hanged myself on my tongue.
Silence is a recurring theme, from the names given (Nyirakiragi - 'the silent one' to grandson being inadvertently named Kunuma-'remain absolutely silent') to being forbidden to speak Kinyarwanda by French nuns when Immaculata is in secondary school to when she stops speaking . Her son Bosco too is silent about the horrors he witnessed after joining the Inkotanyi in 1991 at seventeen and returning to his ravaged town to find his mother emaciated hiding in the basement of a bookstore.
What detracted for me was the drama reveal of the baby daddies and closing romanticization of biracial offspring. There's also a vigorous discussion of who has the right to tell the story of the genocide.
When every letter is traced with a drop of your own blood, you don’t go pointlessly flaunting yourself, you learn to fill the blank spaces with eloquent gazes. It’s a question of decency, make of it what you will. People who write about us, those who seek to transcribe our silences, without knowing the score: they sometimes lack good manners. I won’t let him transform you into fodder for fiction.
All your children scattered, on earth as in the sky, we are here today.
3.5 ⭐️
July 1, 2025
Do 3 stelle, ma con delusione devo ammettere che questo libro non mi è piaciuto quanto mi sarei aspettata e che non mi ha convinta appieno. Sicuramente è stato complice uno stile troppo lirico, che in certi punti mi ha quasi infastidita.
È un peccato, perché la storia è bella: ho apprezzato in particolar modo i capitoli narrativa dal punto di vista della Mama, Immacolata, ma anche i continui spunti di discussione razziale.
Lo rileggerei, scritto da qualcun altro.
È un peccato, perché la storia è bella: ho apprezzato in particolar modo i capitoli narrativa dal punto di vista della Mama, Immacolata, ma anche i continui spunti di discussione razziale.
Lo rileggerei, scritto da qualcun altro.
August 27, 2019
Un très bel ouvrage sur la transmission, la douleur, la vie. L’écriture est maîtrisée et sensible. Un roman bouleversant pour comprendre l’irréparable. Une voix à entendre!
February 24, 2024
4.75/5
Beautifully written story about inter-generational trauma in the context of the rwandan genocide. I learned a ton. The only thing missing was detailed context and background on the genocide. You would have to know a fair amount about thr genocide already to follow along.
Beautifully written story about inter-generational trauma in the context of the rwandan genocide. I learned a ton. The only thing missing was detailed context and background on the genocide. You would have to know a fair amount about thr genocide already to follow along.
September 29, 2022
Un esordio potente e incisivo.
La cornice è quella del genocidio dei tutsi in Ruanda, la guerra civile, il sangue, la fuga (l'esilio) e i legami famigliari che si sfilacciano e poi si riannodano.
Come spesso avviene in romanzi di stampo post-coloniale una delle tematiche centrali della vicenda è l'identità: il rapporto ambiguo tra noi/loro, là/qua. Un rapporto che si rispecchia anche in argomenti satellite come la lingua e l'educazione.
Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse tesse le fila di un racconto a più voci, che proprio dell'identità e della voce fa il suo fulcro. Un racconto che parla di ieri, di oggi e anche di domani. C'è la famiglia, i rapporti, la crescita, l'allentamento, la maternità, la guerra, il lutto... c'è la vita.
Non è un romanzo perfetto ma è un ottimo romanzo.
La cornice è quella del genocidio dei tutsi in Ruanda, la guerra civile, il sangue, la fuga (l'esilio) e i legami famigliari che si sfilacciano e poi si riannodano.
Come spesso avviene in romanzi di stampo post-coloniale una delle tematiche centrali della vicenda è l'identità: il rapporto ambiguo tra noi/loro, là/qua. Un rapporto che si rispecchia anche in argomenti satellite come la lingua e l'educazione.
Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse tesse le fila di un racconto a più voci, che proprio dell'identità e della voce fa il suo fulcro. Un racconto che parla di ieri, di oggi e anche di domani. C'è la famiglia, i rapporti, la crescita, l'allentamento, la maternità, la guerra, il lutto... c'è la vita.
Non è un romanzo perfetto ma è un ottimo romanzo.
January 5, 2023
What a beautiful and heartbreaking book!
All Your Children, Scattered is told from the point of view of the mother, Immaculata, her mixed race daughter, Blanche, and in the second half of the book, her grandson, Stockley - three generations of the same, albeit complicated family, torn apart by Rwandan genocide of 1994. The story in its essence is an ode to the strength of women. Their ability to "mend" things that at the first glance seem unmendable.
In the beginning of the book the rift between the daughter who fled Rwanda and moved to France mere days before her home city of Butare was devastated by Hutu militia, and her mother who stayed behind seems insurmountable. There is no "blame" - the mother essentially arranged her daughter's departure. No hate. There is a lot of love. It is just that ...the daughter, Blanche, simply was not there. Blanche...with her cafe au lait skin and her French father, and her "options" will NEVER be able to understand what her mother and half brother who stayed behind went through. Blanche's son, Stockley, who was born and raised in France, who never set foot in Rwanda, and whom she so miserably failed to teach Kinyarwanda (her native tongue) when he was little surely will never be able to communicate with his broken by grief nyirakuru?
But as it so often happens in life, our determination to be with those we love, often helps us conquer all obstacles. Even the hardest ones: the ones in our own minds..I will admit that when I started listening to All Your Children, Scattered right before the holidays I was worried that I was not in the right "set of mind" for something like that. In the very beginning the books read almost like poetry. But trust me, persevere! And you will be surprised by how good of a story this tiny (only 177 pages) masterpieces manages to deliver.
All Your Children, Scattered is a family saga, a coming of age tale, and a historical fiction all in one!
Do you need to know a lot about Rwandan genocide to understand this book? Yes, and no. I ended up googling a lot while listening to it. And if there is a gap in your knowledge of this disaster, I recommend you do too. Rwandan genocide in which approx half a million people were killed in the course of 100 days is arguably one of the worse disaster of 20th centure. As it goes...we in the "West" know shamefully little about the history of Africa. Yet, the West is not without a blame here. If you do not know - educate yourself. You should know.
This being said, in my opinion, the author provides enough historical facts in the book to educate the reader and, you can finish the entire book without googling Rwanda even once, and still understand the story with zero issues. (But then ,google it after you are done :)
I read some reviews that criticized Umubyeyi Mairesse's writing style, saying that her poetic writing is irreconcilable with the horrors of what has happened. I beg to differ. All Your Children Scattered is about what Rwandan genocide has done to a family, and the trauma that they have carried through years and generation - yes, it's true. But more than that, it is a book about "slow mending". This mending of the person, of the family, of the relationships, and ultimately of the entire country cannot be done by endlessly recounting the gruesome details of what has occured. Finding beauty in life, in art, in literature, in music DESPITE what has happened to you, finding hope in the later generations and using it not to forget but to somehow learn how to live with your past - that's how mending is done. That's how you move forward.
So yes, this book is sad, no doubt, but there is also so much hope in it - don't let your preconceived notion of "what it's about" stop you from reading this gem!.
Thank you Europa Editions for sending me this beautiful book in exchange for my honest review..I ended up listening to this book on audio produced by Tantor Media and narrated by Nene Nwoko, and I cannot recommend it enough if you are an audiobook listener. I will say that according to my research the narrator is Nigerian American, so perhaps her accent and the pronunciation of Kinyarwanda words (of which there are plenty) are not 100%? I don't know. But she surely has done an amazing job conveying all the feelings and emotions. I loved the audio!
All Your Children, Scattered is told from the point of view of the mother, Immaculata, her mixed race daughter, Blanche, and in the second half of the book, her grandson, Stockley - three generations of the same, albeit complicated family, torn apart by Rwandan genocide of 1994. The story in its essence is an ode to the strength of women. Their ability to "mend" things that at the first glance seem unmendable.
In the beginning of the book the rift between the daughter who fled Rwanda and moved to France mere days before her home city of Butare was devastated by Hutu militia, and her mother who stayed behind seems insurmountable. There is no "blame" - the mother essentially arranged her daughter's departure. No hate. There is a lot of love. It is just that ...the daughter, Blanche, simply was not there. Blanche...with her cafe au lait skin and her French father, and her "options" will NEVER be able to understand what her mother and half brother who stayed behind went through. Blanche's son, Stockley, who was born and raised in France, who never set foot in Rwanda, and whom she so miserably failed to teach Kinyarwanda (her native tongue) when he was little surely will never be able to communicate with his broken by grief nyirakuru?
But as it so often happens in life, our determination to be with those we love, often helps us conquer all obstacles. Even the hardest ones: the ones in our own minds..I will admit that when I started listening to All Your Children, Scattered right before the holidays I was worried that I was not in the right "set of mind" for something like that. In the very beginning the books read almost like poetry. But trust me, persevere! And you will be surprised by how good of a story this tiny (only 177 pages) masterpieces manages to deliver.
All Your Children, Scattered is a family saga, a coming of age tale, and a historical fiction all in one!
Do you need to know a lot about Rwandan genocide to understand this book? Yes, and no. I ended up googling a lot while listening to it. And if there is a gap in your knowledge of this disaster, I recommend you do too. Rwandan genocide in which approx half a million people were killed in the course of 100 days is arguably one of the worse disaster of 20th centure. As it goes...we in the "West" know shamefully little about the history of Africa. Yet, the West is not without a blame here. If you do not know - educate yourself. You should know.
This being said, in my opinion, the author provides enough historical facts in the book to educate the reader and, you can finish the entire book without googling Rwanda even once, and still understand the story with zero issues. (But then ,google it after you are done :)
I read some reviews that criticized Umubyeyi Mairesse's writing style, saying that her poetic writing is irreconcilable with the horrors of what has happened. I beg to differ. All Your Children Scattered is about what Rwandan genocide has done to a family, and the trauma that they have carried through years and generation - yes, it's true. But more than that, it is a book about "slow mending". This mending of the person, of the family, of the relationships, and ultimately of the entire country cannot be done by endlessly recounting the gruesome details of what has occured. Finding beauty in life, in art, in literature, in music DESPITE what has happened to you, finding hope in the later generations and using it not to forget but to somehow learn how to live with your past - that's how mending is done. That's how you move forward.
So yes, this book is sad, no doubt, but there is also so much hope in it - don't let your preconceived notion of "what it's about" stop you from reading this gem!.
Thank you Europa Editions for sending me this beautiful book in exchange for my honest review..I ended up listening to this book on audio produced by Tantor Media and narrated by Nene Nwoko, and I cannot recommend it enough if you are an audiobook listener. I will say that according to my research the narrator is Nigerian American, so perhaps her accent and the pronunciation of Kinyarwanda words (of which there are plenty) are not 100%? I don't know. But she surely has done an amazing job conveying all the feelings and emotions. I loved the audio!
January 31, 2023
4.25 stars.
Based on true accounts of Rwandan civil war or Rwanda genocide to be more accurate. It carried me all the way to explore this genocide happened in 1990s and have a peak into one of Rwandan families life.
The story spans to 3 generations and there are 3-4 POV belongs to this Rwanda family. Caught in struggle to live in this genocide, it had tested the relationship between a mother & daughter and as well as motherhood herself. this tormented story tolds us the hardship of a mother raising kids by herself without a husband. Not just trapped in motherhood but as well as racism kicks in when mixed race come into spotlight. the searching for belongings as being mixed race person. touching some parts of their culture and languages and as time passed, the mother tougue might be lost in the time as they are absorbing themselves to become Francophone. the national identity was questioned to one of MC.
Beata was so frank about her country's conditions and love this description because readers will learn more. Even when describe the genocide, it was a disturbing and details reading. it creates pain and harrow feelings inside me while reading it. I did not shed tears but it was torturing to read the horrors of war. the descriptions was none spared, it was exposed bare naked truth. however, the emotions appeared weren't way dramatic or pressing so I didn't really able to indeed emotionally connected deeply to it.
After reading the genocide inhumane experience, I also get to read the aftermath of this war and it was mostly PTSD. PTSD were mentioned and one of the characters were deep into it and caused something shocking. this was an eye-opening reading for me and it left me feeling hollow inside too. Because those survivors are struggling with their life so much aftermath and it influenced my thoughts on how unfair the world is. each of their innocent dreams were crushed in the shadow of war. Despite of that, none of political facts were written too particular to understand better on this Rwanda genocide.
the language in describing Rwandan life in this book really touched my heart. it has this sombre tone but still have that living sparks and also filled with beautiful & flowery language in describing these strong Rwandan women. Probably it was written based on the author's life too so it seems written close to the heart. I admired the usage of Kinyarwand (local language) in between the stories and it made reader aware of Rwandan languages too.
Overall, this is a must reading, the world need to be aware or learn a little about Rwanda genocide. this book has done a good job to acknowledge the ugliness of war. if Beata would explains more on war situation clearly and plays more emotions, this can be a solid 5 stars. i'm reader who always wants to learn something from a book whether it is fiction or non, facts should be the best book's criteria to me.
Based on true accounts of Rwandan civil war or Rwanda genocide to be more accurate. It carried me all the way to explore this genocide happened in 1990s and have a peak into one of Rwandan families life.
The story spans to 3 generations and there are 3-4 POV belongs to this Rwanda family. Caught in struggle to live in this genocide, it had tested the relationship between a mother & daughter and as well as motherhood herself. this tormented story tolds us the hardship of a mother raising kids by herself without a husband. Not just trapped in motherhood but as well as racism kicks in when mixed race come into spotlight. the searching for belongings as being mixed race person. touching some parts of their culture and languages and as time passed, the mother tougue might be lost in the time as they are absorbing themselves to become Francophone. the national identity was questioned to one of MC.
Beata was so frank about her country's conditions and love this description because readers will learn more. Even when describe the genocide, it was a disturbing and details reading. it creates pain and harrow feelings inside me while reading it. I did not shed tears but it was torturing to read the horrors of war. the descriptions was none spared, it was exposed bare naked truth. however, the emotions appeared weren't way dramatic or pressing so I didn't really able to indeed emotionally connected deeply to it.
After reading the genocide inhumane experience, I also get to read the aftermath of this war and it was mostly PTSD. PTSD were mentioned and one of the characters were deep into it and caused something shocking. this was an eye-opening reading for me and it left me feeling hollow inside too. Because those survivors are struggling with their life so much aftermath and it influenced my thoughts on how unfair the world is. each of their innocent dreams were crushed in the shadow of war. Despite of that, none of political facts were written too particular to understand better on this Rwanda genocide.
the language in describing Rwandan life in this book really touched my heart. it has this sombre tone but still have that living sparks and also filled with beautiful & flowery language in describing these strong Rwandan women. Probably it was written based on the author's life too so it seems written close to the heart. I admired the usage of Kinyarwand (local language) in between the stories and it made reader aware of Rwandan languages too.
Overall, this is a must reading, the world need to be aware or learn a little about Rwanda genocide. this book has done a good job to acknowledge the ugliness of war. if Beata would explains more on war situation clearly and plays more emotions, this can be a solid 5 stars. i'm reader who always wants to learn something from a book whether it is fiction or non, facts should be the best book's criteria to me.
January 26, 2024
"I'm sitting in your little bedroom, on your bed covered in a silent dust of drought. The sky is clear beyond the window panes, where drops of water are trickling, clear beads that an invisible hand seems to have threaded evenly on a string of sisal. They follow each other obediently, sliding with delicate haste down the glass, pearling harmoniously, shot through with a ray of shining light before disappearing into the wall as it swallows hundreds of hurried opaline ghosts. Time stretches on, indefinitely, a damp serpent pitilessly restraining me."
This book snuck up on me and I am surprised by how much I ended up liking it. It is quite different from Mukasonga in how it approaches the heavy subject matter. A friend wrote in their review that the poetic nature of Mairesse's prose completely obliterated all the realities of the Rwandan Civil War and the resulting genocide for them. It's not the same for me. I don't think the writing is at odds, or irreconcilable, with the horrors it narrates. Moving through the lives of people and communities picking up the pieces, its aching beauty is not an anodyne balm that belittles their sorrows.
Mairesse manages to explore the complexity of all her characters within a specific socio-cultural milieu and point in history without exoticising or fetishising their struggles and resilience. 'Peace', thrown around in abundance, has dimensions of its own, and deep wounds take time to heal. How do we rebuild our lives after, especially when we have to pretend that things are back to "normal"? What threads tie us to each other and to what we call home? Healing can take time, adopt guises. In Alison Anderson's translation from the French, we see there's, still, hope left in the dark.
(I received a finished copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.)
June 12, 2022
“All Your Children, Scattered”, the award-winning debut novel by Rwandan author, Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse, translated from the French by Alison Anderson, swept me up on a quiet Saturday and didn’t set me down until I was full-to-bursting with the colors, sights, and sounds, tastes and emotions of both the horror and the healing of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis of 1994.
When a novel contains prose this evocative and poetic, I assume that it’s due to a magical alchemy between the writer and the translator. What a feat! I devoured this story told of three generations; Blanche who uprooted to France at the start of the 1994 genocide, her mother Immaculata who stayed and survived, and Blanche’s son Stokley who represents the conjunction of their worlds: “the knot between the generations”.
“All Your Children, Scattered” is about fraught mother-daughter relationships, war and displacement, homecoming and healing. These themes, set forth by Mairesse’s gorgeous writing, against the backdrop of Rwanda and France resonate and reveal.
Thanks to Europa for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this beautiful and illuminating novel.
When a novel contains prose this evocative and poetic, I assume that it’s due to a magical alchemy between the writer and the translator. What a feat! I devoured this story told of three generations; Blanche who uprooted to France at the start of the 1994 genocide, her mother Immaculata who stayed and survived, and Blanche’s son Stokley who represents the conjunction of their worlds: “the knot between the generations”.
“All Your Children, Scattered” is about fraught mother-daughter relationships, war and displacement, homecoming and healing. These themes, set forth by Mairesse’s gorgeous writing, against the backdrop of Rwanda and France resonate and reveal.
Thanks to Europa for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this beautiful and illuminating novel.
December 17, 2022
I love reading books from Europa Editions, in that the independent publisher introduces me to authors (often in translation) that I otherwise wouldn't encounter or might not think to give a try. All Your Children, Scattered tells the story of one family splintered by the Rwandan civil war in the 90s, and we follow the daughter, Blanche, who escaped to Bordeaux and made a new life. She returns to reunite with her mother, Immaculata, and learns exactly what happened to her brother. The third viewpoint is Stokely, Blanche's son, tries to figure out who he is and where he belongs. The writing was excellent and I thought the alternating chapters and perspectives were used to great effect. Recommended.
Thank you Netgalley and Europa Editions for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you Netgalley and Europa Editions for the advance copy, which was provided in exchange for an honest review.
January 31, 2024
Such a beautiful way to make you usefully uncomfortable. The characters exist in such difficult spots of identities where silence serves better than words; words which seem to grapple for authenticity for lands continually excluding the characters. Blanche’s mother wanted to protect her by diluting her black lineage, suppressing her culture, guiding her towards France and away from Rwanda, all things a fan of multiculturalism in the West would struggle to concede to and understand. Yet - in the context of their story - you as a reader can’t entirely disagree with how this benefited and possibly saved Blanche. Simultaneously, calling her privileged disservices her experience of the bloodshed, her exclusion from communities in her native and diasporic lands. Her husband takes this conversation even farther as a mixed man raised in France: what is the boundary of appropriation for black people in the diaspora with no known ties to Africa in their efforts to reclaim these? His perpetually crossing this line and desire to exploit Blanche’s culture drifts them apart (and even leads him to exploit himself). But their son Stokely, becomes a word that means both yesterday and tomorrow for a home that has to live in ambiguous place.
Gorgeously written!!!
Gorgeously written!!!
April 29, 2024
One of the best books I ’ve read! After a bit confusing beginning I was hooked! Some parts reminded me of the book Americana by Chimamanda Ngozi Adicie, when describing life in foreign country as a black person, person of mixed colour,looking for roots. Life in Rwanda and how genocide made an impact in small people’s life!
June 11, 2024
A beautiful book about the gruesome subject of the Rwandan genocide and a family who survives it but is torn apart by it. Immaculata and Stokeley were wonderful characters. Jacaranda trees, books, grief, and fables intertwine in a poetic narrative.
April 17, 2024
Sarò sincero, questo libro non mi ha coinvolto granché, anche se non sono riuscito a capire da cosa dipenda. Tra l'altro non si tratta nemmeno di fatti troppo distanti da me - parlo solo ed esclusivamente a livello temporale - perché ricordo ancora i servizi al telegiornale che parlavano dell'atroce guerra interna tra hutu e tutsi in Ruanda. Ho provato un'insolita, per me, mancanza di empatia per i fatti narrati che mi sono sembrati in qualche modo simili a cento altri esempi che purtroppo la storia dell'umanità ci ha fornito. L'aspetto più preoccupante è che forse mi sono talmente assuefatto ad essere l'uomo bianco occidentale che vive nell'agio (o che comunque in confronto a come vivono le popolazioni più povere della Terra, sguazza nel benessere) da non sapermi più rapportare a realtà tanto diverse.
May 5, 2024
Beautifully written
July 16, 2022
A new release coming soon! (August 2022) I got to read an advanced reader copy from the publisher and I cannot wait for this book to come out!
All My Children, Scattered traces the movements of three generations of a Franco-Rwandan family, as they each, in their own painful ways, unravel the complex emotions and tensions inflicted on them by Rwanda's colonial history and, more recently, the Rwandan Genocide. Immaculata, the mother, struggles to find a place for herself and her children in a world still ruled by colonial culture. She finds herself equally trapped and freed by her own internalized ideas about race and color. She passes on these questions of identity to her daughter, Blanche, a mixed race, half white, half black woman, who finds herself also struggling with what it means to be Rwandan within and outside of Rwanda, in Europe. Blanche is a survivor of the genocide and turmoil of the 1990s; she wrangles with her luck, her fate, her role in it as a Rwandan expatriate. Stokely is Blanche's son, another generation removed from the colonial encounter and one generation removed from the Genocide, but he is no less subject to this history.
There are other characters woven into their story: Bosco, Immaculata's other child, her son, who also survives the genocide by fighting through it. He was a soldier, a human being caught up in the gritty reality of the genocide. Then there is Blanche's husband, a West Indian man, facing similar questions of postcolonial identity. He understands and yet, also, cannot understand Blanche's Rwandan identity.
What I love most about All My Children, Scattered is its historicity and the native point of view it privileges, centers, revolves around. Mairesse immerses the reader in the Rwandan experience of history. While colonial history is a foundational premise of the novel, it does not fall into that trap of making this about white men and white experience; this is not a novel of the colonizer, this is about Rwandans, the people and their experience.
I deeply appreciated that Mairesse did not delve into the details of colonial events, what happened in what year; the machinations of state politics was a buzz (a loud one at times) in the background. What was most visible was the effect of politics on the ordinary citizen, the family, individuals. This is not a historical fiction that reads like a history lesson - thankfully! -- no, this is a novel that focuses on the emotional trauma, the unseen generation damage.
Mairesse's prose delivers. The language is beautiful and evocative. The voice of each character is clear, unmistakable. Each chapter is narrated by a different character so Mairesse treats the reader to a view of Rwandan history from multiple points. The reader feels the connections across time, the intangible tensions from one generation to the next.
This is a book to read and re-read.
All My Children, Scattered traces the movements of three generations of a Franco-Rwandan family, as they each, in their own painful ways, unravel the complex emotions and tensions inflicted on them by Rwanda's colonial history and, more recently, the Rwandan Genocide. Immaculata, the mother, struggles to find a place for herself and her children in a world still ruled by colonial culture. She finds herself equally trapped and freed by her own internalized ideas about race and color. She passes on these questions of identity to her daughter, Blanche, a mixed race, half white, half black woman, who finds herself also struggling with what it means to be Rwandan within and outside of Rwanda, in Europe. Blanche is a survivor of the genocide and turmoil of the 1990s; she wrangles with her luck, her fate, her role in it as a Rwandan expatriate. Stokely is Blanche's son, another generation removed from the colonial encounter and one generation removed from the Genocide, but he is no less subject to this history.
There are other characters woven into their story: Bosco, Immaculata's other child, her son, who also survives the genocide by fighting through it. He was a soldier, a human being caught up in the gritty reality of the genocide. Then there is Blanche's husband, a West Indian man, facing similar questions of postcolonial identity. He understands and yet, also, cannot understand Blanche's Rwandan identity.
What I love most about All My Children, Scattered is its historicity and the native point of view it privileges, centers, revolves around. Mairesse immerses the reader in the Rwandan experience of history. While colonial history is a foundational premise of the novel, it does not fall into that trap of making this about white men and white experience; this is not a novel of the colonizer, this is about Rwandans, the people and their experience.
I deeply appreciated that Mairesse did not delve into the details of colonial events, what happened in what year; the machinations of state politics was a buzz (a loud one at times) in the background. What was most visible was the effect of politics on the ordinary citizen, the family, individuals. This is not a historical fiction that reads like a history lesson - thankfully! -- no, this is a novel that focuses on the emotional trauma, the unseen generation damage.
Mairesse's prose delivers. The language is beautiful and evocative. The voice of each character is clear, unmistakable. Each chapter is narrated by a different character so Mairesse treats the reader to a view of Rwandan history from multiple points. The reader feels the connections across time, the intangible tensions from one generation to the next.
This is a book to read and re-read.
July 16, 2022
A new release coming soon! (August 2022) I got to read an advanced reader copy from the publisher and I cannot wait for this book to come out!
All My Children, Scattered traces the movements of three generations of a Franco-Rwandan family, as they each, in their own painful ways, unravel the complex emotions and tensions inflicted on them by Rwanda's colonial history and, more recently, the Rwandan Genocide. Immaculata, the mother, struggles to find a place for herself and her children in a world still ruled by colonial culture. She finds herself equally trapped and freed by her own internalized ideas about race and color. She passes on these questions of identity to her daughter, Blanche, a mixed race, half white, half black woman, who finds herself also struggling with what it means to be Rwandan within and outside of Rwanda, in Europe. Blanche is a survivor of the genocide and turmoil of the 1990s; she wrangles with her luck, her fate, her role in it as a Rwandan expatriate. Stokely is Blanche's son, another generation removed from the colonial encounter and one generation removed from the Genocide, but he is no less subject to this history.
There are other characters woven into their story: Bosco, Immaculata's other child, her son, who also survives the genocide by fighting through it. He was a soldier, a human being caught up in the gritty reality of the genocide. Then there is Blanche's husband, a West Indian man, facing similar questions of postcolonial identity. He understands and yet, also, cannot understand Blanche's Rwandan identity.
What I love most about All My Children, Scattered is its historicity and the native point of view it privileges, centers, revolves around. Mairesse immerses the reader in the Rwandan experience of history. While colonial history is a foundational premise of the novel, it does not fall into that trap of making this about white men and white experience; this is not a novel of the colonizer, this is about Rwandans, the people and their experience.
I deeply appreciated that Mairesse did not delve into the details of colonial events, what happened in what year; the machinations of state politics was a buzz (a loud one at times) in the background. What was most visible was the effect of politics on the ordinary citizen, the family, individuals. This is not a historical fiction that reads like a history lesson - thankfully! -- no, this is a novel that focuses on the emotional trauma, the unseen generation damage.
Mairesse's prose delivers. The language is beautiful and evocative. The voice of each character is clear, unmistakable. Each chapter is narrated by a different character so Mairesse treats the reader to a view of Rwandan history from multiple points. The reader feels the connections across time, the intangible tensions from one generation to the next.
This is a book to read and re-read.
All My Children, Scattered traces the movements of three generations of a Franco-Rwandan family, as they each, in their own painful ways, unravel the complex emotions and tensions inflicted on them by Rwanda's colonial history and, more recently, the Rwandan Genocide. Immaculata, the mother, struggles to find a place for herself and her children in a world still ruled by colonial culture. She finds herself equally trapped and freed by her own internalized ideas about race and color. She passes on these questions of identity to her daughter, Blanche, a mixed race, half white, half black woman, who finds herself also struggling with what it means to be Rwandan within and outside of Rwanda, in Europe. Blanche is a survivor of the genocide and turmoil of the 1990s; she wrangles with her luck, her fate, her role in it as a Rwandan expatriate. Stokely is Blanche's son, another generation removed from the colonial encounter and one generation removed from the Genocide, but he is no less subject to this history.
There are other characters woven into their story: Bosco, Immaculata's other child, her son, who also survives the genocide by fighting through it. He was a soldier, a human being caught up in the gritty reality of the genocide. Then there is Blanche's husband, a West Indian man, facing similar questions of postcolonial identity. He understands and yet, also, cannot understand Blanche's Rwandan identity.
What I love most about All My Children, Scattered is its historicity and the native point of view it privileges, centers, revolves around. Mairesse immerses the reader in the Rwandan experience of history. While colonial history is a foundational premise of the novel, it does not fall into that trap of making this about white men and white experience; this is not a novel of the colonizer, this is about Rwandans, the people and their experience.
I deeply appreciated that Mairesse did not delve into the details of colonial events, what happened in what year; the machinations of state politics was a buzz (a loud one at times) in the background. What was most visible was the effect of politics on the ordinary citizen, the family, individuals. This is not a historical fiction that reads like a history lesson - thankfully! -- no, this is a novel that focuses on the emotional trauma, the unseen generation damage.
Mairesse's prose delivers. The language is beautiful and evocative. The voice of each character is clear, unmistakable. Each chapter is narrated by a different character so Mairesse treats the reader to a view of Rwandan history from multiple points. The reader feels the connections across time, the intangible tensions from one generation to the next.
This is a book to read and re-read.
April 9, 2020
Un livre témoignage écrit par trois personnages offrant 3 points de vue. Immaculata, sa fille Blanche et le fils de celle-ci Stokely.
Blanche est née au rwanda de l'union d'Immaculata et d'un français, elle est donc métisse, ce qui lui vaut respect et parfois incompréhension. Son petit frère Bosco, tout comme elle n'a pas connu son père. Leur enfance se déroule dans ce pays dont l'histoire a subit de terribles soubresauts jusqu'à ce terrible mois d'avril 1994 qui voit arriver le génocide des Tutsis.
Blanche arrive à fuir en France, Bosco s'engage dans les combats et Immaculata essaie de survivre.
Tour à tour, Blance, sa mère et son fils écrivent les liens qu'ils essaient de retisser malgré les événements, malgré la guerre et malgré les ressentiments qui couvent.
Comment s'aimer quand on a été séparé par un traumatisme vécu de manière si différente. Comment se réapproprier sa famille et ses racines quand on ne se comprend plus et que le silence a pris la place du désespoir.
Un livre magnifique, empli de sagesse, de sensibilité, de vie et surtout et par-dessus tout de transmission familiale.
Blanche est née au rwanda de l'union d'Immaculata et d'un français, elle est donc métisse, ce qui lui vaut respect et parfois incompréhension. Son petit frère Bosco, tout comme elle n'a pas connu son père. Leur enfance se déroule dans ce pays dont l'histoire a subit de terribles soubresauts jusqu'à ce terrible mois d'avril 1994 qui voit arriver le génocide des Tutsis.
Blanche arrive à fuir en France, Bosco s'engage dans les combats et Immaculata essaie de survivre.
Tour à tour, Blance, sa mère et son fils écrivent les liens qu'ils essaient de retisser malgré les événements, malgré la guerre et malgré les ressentiments qui couvent.
Comment s'aimer quand on a été séparé par un traumatisme vécu de manière si différente. Comment se réapproprier sa famille et ses racines quand on ne se comprend plus et que le silence a pris la place du désespoir.
Un livre magnifique, empli de sagesse, de sensibilité, de vie et surtout et par-dessus tout de transmission familiale.
January 23, 2023
È difficile scappare dai propri demoni, "forse si riesce a fuggire da quel che ci corre dietro - recita un proverbio - ma non da quel che ci corre dentro". E come non avere demoni dentro di sè, quando si è vissuta sulla propria pelle una guerra, un annientamento, come fu il genocidio in Rwanda nel 1994?
Le voci di Immaculata, di Blanche e la narrazione che ne riunisce i fili, ci parla di questo. Delle lacerazioni e dei tentativi di continuare comunque a vivere, cercando una collocazione per sè, per la propria storia e per i propri figli. Ci rende palpabile la nostalgia e l'orrore, la distanza fra chi va e chi resta e l'annesso senso di colpa, ci racconta del potere lenitivo della parola, ma anche dell'impossibilità di raccontare il troppo Male... Intenso e lirico; mi ha molto colpita.
"Siamo una traccia che sopravvive in mezzo alle grida, odio e amore, l'uno o l'altro, talvolta insieme..."
Le voci di Immaculata, di Blanche e la narrazione che ne riunisce i fili, ci parla di questo. Delle lacerazioni e dei tentativi di continuare comunque a vivere, cercando una collocazione per sè, per la propria storia e per i propri figli. Ci rende palpabile la nostalgia e l'orrore, la distanza fra chi va e chi resta e l'annesso senso di colpa, ci racconta del potere lenitivo della parola, ma anche dell'impossibilità di raccontare il troppo Male... Intenso e lirico; mi ha molto colpita.
"Siamo una traccia che sopravvive in mezzo alle grida, odio e amore, l'uno o l'altro, talvolta insieme..."
October 9, 2022
Un livre nécessaire et en plus, très bien écrit. L'auteure sera présente au Festival international de littérature FILIT de Iasi, en Roumanie. Hâte de la rencontrer.
August 26, 2025
"peace goes out to greet the flowers gorged with water from the rainy season, still struggling to exhale a fragrance of life in spite of it all, in a place where the stench of rot has seeped into everything.”
The voices of three generations are weaved together to give us this hauntingly beautiful story to tell the tales and aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsis.
Today, we get swept by data and numbers and eye-catching headlines that whether we like it or not we become used to it and desensitized from the horrors of genocides and the colonial rulings.
However, in this book we get to learn about them, of their identity, heritage, dreams that got crushed, and the everlasting grief of everything and everyone you love and could've become before the greedy and vicious people got involved.
Immaculata and Blance, a mother and her daughter took different paths during the genocide where one immigrated to Belgium and her mother who stayed in Rwanda during the genocide not knowing if she's gonna live to see another day and grieving the loss of her son.
The common thing between the three of them is that they used silence as both a weapon and a shield.
Such a tragic and beautiful book, Mairesse managed to write it with such a poetic and poignant prose, exploring identity, motherhood, love, grief, and who has the right to write about this history.
May 17, 2025
Is this the first book I’ve read by a Rwandan author? I think so, maybe.
I have heard it said that part of the reason the world didn’t pay attention to the genocide in 1994, was because the focus was on the political change in South Africa. Because of that, I’ve always felt a tenderness for Rwanda. In high school, I went through a phase of fixation on Rwandan history, until I started having nightmares - I wasn’t attending therapy at the time, and had no outlet for what I was learning.
I do think it is too simplistic, too easy, for people to claim that they didn’t know about Rwanda because they were too busy holding their breath for South Africa. The reasons the international community ignores wars and pogroms and genocides are way more sinister, more deeply rooted.
Anyway, THIS NOVEL: written by a Rwandan author who now lives in France. It is carries the gentle lilt of a novel translated, wraps words in a blanket that requires just a little more attention for the full effect, just a little more thinking, in return for a lot of feeling.
ALL YOUR CHILDREN SCATTERED is about stories and storytelling, about uprooting and replanting, about childhood and motherhood. It is about grieving and war and rebuilding. It is about the intermixing of personal histories with the history of the land, and how one cannot be written without the other. It is about respecting a life lived, a story, a tragedy survived, and letting the scattered pick up their own pieces.
Thank you to Netgalley and Europa Editions for providing the eARC.
I have heard it said that part of the reason the world didn’t pay attention to the genocide in 1994, was because the focus was on the political change in South Africa. Because of that, I’ve always felt a tenderness for Rwanda. In high school, I went through a phase of fixation on Rwandan history, until I started having nightmares - I wasn’t attending therapy at the time, and had no outlet for what I was learning.
I do think it is too simplistic, too easy, for people to claim that they didn’t know about Rwanda because they were too busy holding their breath for South Africa. The reasons the international community ignores wars and pogroms and genocides are way more sinister, more deeply rooted.
Anyway, THIS NOVEL: written by a Rwandan author who now lives in France. It is carries the gentle lilt of a novel translated, wraps words in a blanket that requires just a little more attention for the full effect, just a little more thinking, in return for a lot of feeling.
ALL YOUR CHILDREN SCATTERED is about stories and storytelling, about uprooting and replanting, about childhood and motherhood. It is about grieving and war and rebuilding. It is about the intermixing of personal histories with the history of the land, and how one cannot be written without the other. It is about respecting a life lived, a story, a tragedy survived, and letting the scattered pick up their own pieces.
Thank you to Netgalley and Europa Editions for providing the eARC.
June 13, 2024
I read this beautiful story for a new book club. It is not one that I would have come to on my own probably, but all the better for that. It's beautifully written and unravels a Rwandan family's story in the years following the genocide of 1994. A poetic meditation on sorrow, genocide, motherhood, diaspora and so much more - the book is short yet rich in detail and emotion. I would highly recommend!
November 12, 2024
beata umubyeyi mairesse embodies writing as a pure art form. i hope her other works are translated to english so i can read them all
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