Elizebeth Reidenbach

“Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building. A vigorous totalitarian order requires that the people be invested in
the leaders' scheme, and while genocide may be the most perverse and ambitious means to this end, it is also the most comprehensive.
In 1994, Rwanda was regarded in much of the rest of the world as the exemplary instance of the chaos and anarchy associated with collapsed states. In fact, the genocide was the product of order, authoritarianism, decades of modern political theorizing and indoctrination, and one of the most meticulously administered states
in history. And strange as it may sound, the ideology- or what Rwandans call "the logic"-
-of genocide was promoted as a way
not to create suffering but to alleviate it. The specter of an absolute menace that requires absolute eradication binds leader and people
in a hermetic utopian embrace, and the individual-always an annoyance to totality -ceases to exist.”
― Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families

“To them I was first a Black, then a Black from another country, and then a person.”
― Maria Nhambu, America's Daughter

“She stabbed the earth with her big fork as if she could make Cookie Mac’s blood sprout from it.”
― Susan Rowland, The Alchemy Fire Murder

“But she also considered that it ran deeper than that: in order to change the way people think, you have to change how they perceive.”
― Barry Kirwan, Eden's Endgame