Author of The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Clemantine Wamariya is six years old when she and her older sister Claire are forced to flee their home in Kigali, Rwanda, to escape genocide perpetrated by the Hutus against the Tutsis. As they travel from refugee camp to refugee camp across seven African countries, Wamariya is dependent on her older sister for protection. As time goes on, she grows resentful of Claire’s decisions to leave places where Wamariya has grown comfortable: While Claire prefers to move frequently in search of better circumstances, Wamariya takes comfort in familiarity. Still a young child, Wamariya feels lost without the guidance of her mother or her older brother Pudi, who “helped [her] understand a world [she] would never understand” (137). As a refugee, she learns never to accept gifts, for they always come with conditions. When at age 12 she moves to America with a UN program, she continues to be wary of kindnesses.

Throughout her journey Wamariya struggles to maintain her identity. She feels dehumanized in the camps, where she becomes “a negative, a receptacle of need” (42). She is ruled by hunger, thirst, and fear, and she feels “worthless except as food” for lice (50).