Charlotte Harrell

“Now it felt like I did nothing. I had everything and I did nothing.”
― Clemantine Wamariya, The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

“I wanted to retain the right to disappear. Remaining in place, nesting -- it sets off fears that somebody would yank me away. To counter it, I had to flee. I had to reassure myself that I still knew how to escape.”
― Clemantine Wamariya, The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

“My refugee skills were kicking in. I wanted to be who I needed to be and get what there was to get. There was a feedback loop that I could now see. If I performed well in my role as a student, people responded with happiness and pride and wanted to pour more resources into me. Fill me up again and again.”
― Clemantine Wamariya, The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

“When you're traumatized, your sense of self, your individuality, is beaten up. Your skin color, your background, your pain, your hope, your gender, your faith, it's all defiled. Those essential pieces of yourself are stolen. You, as a person, are emptied and flattened, and that violence, that theft, keeps you from embodying a life that feels like your own. To continue to exist, as a whole person, you need to re-create, for yourself, an identity untouched by everything that's been used against you. You need to imagine and build a self out of elements that are not tainted. You need to remake yourself on your own terms.”
― Clemantine Wamariya, The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After