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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch
barbaraalfond's review against another edition
4.0
Brilliantly, insightfully told, this history of a dark, horrific period in Rwandan—and human—history delves into the four month period beginning in April of 1994, during which close to one million men, women, and children were slain by their countrymen. Using the ancient Biblical story of Cain and Abel was an excellent framing device to help the reader , at a very basic level, tunderstand how easy it is to divide a family, much less a nation. Further, extended explanations of unproven, asinine, yet accepted theories of racial superiority thrust upon a population by white foreign imperialists also serve to help a reader understand how this heightened madness can happen. My only problem with the book is that it is now 24 years old, and I need to continue my research to find an explanation of how Rwanda has managed to heal itself. It is a beautiful country with the most welcoming, kindest people we have ever met, and I must find a way to understand how it got from its awful past to its vibrant present….and whether the darkness of those days could ever return.
mtb4tw's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
buckyshuman's review against another edition
2.75
Context for my lower rating:
- I generally don’t like nonfiction. I picked this up because I thought it was going to be a bit different than your usual nonfiction book.
- From the title and description, I thought it was going to be primarily stories of people in Rwanda. There was a mismatch of expectations vs what I read.
- This book was published in 1998. There’s been so much that has happened to the country since then.
I understand and appreciate this is an important book. It also was written at a time where a reporter could be straightforward and say this is genocide or the government is wrong without “both siding it’.”
But unfortunately, it read a bit like your typical nonfiction book— a fleshed out wiki page. This is not a criticism of the book just my preference of the style I read.
But unfortunately, it read a bit like your typical nonfiction book— a fleshed out wiki page. This is not a criticism of the book just my preference of the style I read.
vfjowers's review against another edition
4.0
It's difficult to find good literature about Rwanda, especially from a Western perspective. Yet, I think Gourevitch exhibits a lot of sympathy and thoughtfulness in this book, which provides a new way of looking at Rwanda.
gary09's review against another edition
5.0
For those who have not experienced genocide and its consequences first-hand, books such as this are an entry to a reality from which fate, circumstance, or Providence (if you may!) has insulated us. There's a time and a place for writing that is purely objective and observational, offering no opinion or commentary. The Rwandan genocide was not that time, nor that place. In that way, I was refreshed to read Gourevitch's well-researched account and to see him offer very direct critiques of the way the international community handled the situation. It's heart-wrenching to think about how many more people died while others were doing the political dance of should we or shouldn't we get involved.
joehardy's review against another edition
5.0
How does one reckon with the unparalleled horrors of genocide?
While Gourevitch's account is imperfect, it does an admirable job estimating the limitless pain, sorrow and madness that genocide, and on a larger scale, the ramifications of colonialism, bring. His ability to provide the geopolitical and sociopolitical context to the events of the Rwandan genocide was what made the book. Were the events of 1994 solely attributable to tribal animosities? Certainly not. This hideous phenomenon is directly attributable to the legacy of colonialism. Europeans, specifically the Belgians and French in this case, and their needs to erect geographic and racial barriers between peoples that had co-mingled for the entirety of history, in order to support arbitrary power structure, were the seeds that, when sown, led to the fathomless violence of the genocide. Moreover, these powers, who were well aware of the conflicts they were fomenting, had decades to, at least try, to rectify their ills. However, because of the marginal benefit the subjugation of Tutsi's had to the contemporary French state, any measures that may have eventually led to a diminished death toll were avoided.
While France certainly aided and abetted, and should be held financially accountable, for the Rwandan genocide, what is almost worse, is the response the international community had, at large, to the genocide while it was happening. The violence was well known to the powers that be. The UN and the United States simply didn't care enough, about the nameless Black bodies being destroyed as a result of colonial policies of ethnic superiority, because they didn't have to. Their response demonstrated the prevailing, unspoken racism, that infects Western European culture. This is well demonstrated, by Gourevitch, in the response to Rwanda compared to both the contemporary Bosnian genocide and the Holocaust. Moreover, this insidious disregard for African humanity, is expressed in the international community's inability to allow for nuance in the Rwandan case and it's conflation of differing crimes without taking into the context of the situation. I forget the exact reference but at one point, Gourevitch quotes Paul Kagame, now the president of Rwanda, as saying that the International Community expected Rwandans and particularly Tutsis, to live up to an impossibly high level of morality in the wake of the genocide. I found this to be particularly salient because it seemed emblematic of the paradoxical nature the White, Western European power structure, which has hoarded wealth and capital for the past 400 years, which treats all those, from who they have pillaged, looted and killed, as if it's their fault they were disadvantaged by these conquests. This attitude is directly applicable to both domestic and international issues and underscores Europeans inability to admit to and begin to rectify the legacies of these errors.
However this is not the entire story either. How, as a citizen of the United States, do we approach Paul Kagame and new African leaders such as himself, who, while capably improving the conditions for their citizens, do so without the existing in the democratic environment that characterizes Western liberal democracy. While Gourevitch asks Kagame some very reasonable questions about his army's conduct in the wake of the genocide, he approaches the, admittedly, charismatic leader, from a point of near reverence. Since the book was authored in 1998, Gourevitch clearly didn't have the knowledge that Kagame and his Ugandan neighbor Yoweri Museveni, whom he bore many similarities, would both be in power over 20 years later. From cursory reading on both leaders' Wikipedia's, while both have done admirable jobs improving economic conditions for their respective peoples and maintaining civil order, they are marred with allegations of suppressing dissenting ideas and foreign interference. Gourevitich, towards the end of the book in his discussion with the ongoing violence stemming from the Rwandan genocide spilling into Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Tanzania, questions if claims such as these are legitimate or if their unfair applications of Western sensibilities to a region where those same sensibilities were voided when Europeans saw opportunities for enrichment and the perpetration of their power. 20 years later, I'm curious what Gourevitch would say to the ongoing critiques of these regimes.
The one area in which I, as well as many other reviewers, would have liked to see Gourevitch delve deeper, was the question of what motivated individual actors, largely bereft of power, to commit acts of violence when called upon by the state. Were they, similar to claims made by the Nazi's, simply following orders as per their nature. Or, was it because many, confronted with a direct way to enforce the minute power afforded to them by their ethnic Hutu identity, felt at though, through the extermination of the Tutsi's, that they would somehow be materially rewarded. And, in both cases, who is ultimately responsible for creating, either a group of people so prone to following order that they would massacre 800,000 of their neighbors, or the ethnic and racial structures that determined power, and by extension value and led to the same conclusion? How long, post colonialization, did it take for Rwanda to truly gain autonomy or was this even a possibility? How long, post-genocide, will it take for Rwanda to truly gain autonomy and can this ethically take place with Western European involvement and the imposition of Western European norms of governance?
Personally, I'm not really sure.
Overall a very necessary, very compelling book.
While Gourevitch's account is imperfect, it does an admirable job estimating the limitless pain, sorrow and madness that genocide, and on a larger scale, the ramifications of colonialism, bring. His ability to provide the geopolitical and sociopolitical context to the events of the Rwandan genocide was what made the book. Were the events of 1994 solely attributable to tribal animosities? Certainly not. This hideous phenomenon is directly attributable to the legacy of colonialism. Europeans, specifically the Belgians and French in this case, and their needs to erect geographic and racial barriers between peoples that had co-mingled for the entirety of history, in order to support arbitrary power structure, were the seeds that, when sown, led to the fathomless violence of the genocide. Moreover, these powers, who were well aware of the conflicts they were fomenting, had decades to, at least try, to rectify their ills. However, because of the marginal benefit the subjugation of Tutsi's had to the contemporary French state, any measures that may have eventually led to a diminished death toll were avoided.
While France certainly aided and abetted, and should be held financially accountable, for the Rwandan genocide, what is almost worse, is the response the international community had, at large, to the genocide while it was happening. The violence was well known to the powers that be. The UN and the United States simply didn't care enough, about the nameless Black bodies being destroyed as a result of colonial policies of ethnic superiority, because they didn't have to. Their response demonstrated the prevailing, unspoken racism, that infects Western European culture. This is well demonstrated, by Gourevitch, in the response to Rwanda compared to both the contemporary Bosnian genocide and the Holocaust. Moreover, this insidious disregard for African humanity, is expressed in the international community's inability to allow for nuance in the Rwandan case and it's conflation of differing crimes without taking into the context of the situation. I forget the exact reference but at one point, Gourevitch quotes Paul Kagame, now the president of Rwanda, as saying that the International Community expected Rwandans and particularly Tutsis, to live up to an impossibly high level of morality in the wake of the genocide. I found this to be particularly salient because it seemed emblematic of the paradoxical nature the White, Western European power structure, which has hoarded wealth and capital for the past 400 years, which treats all those, from who they have pillaged, looted and killed, as if it's their fault they were disadvantaged by these conquests. This attitude is directly applicable to both domestic and international issues and underscores Europeans inability to admit to and begin to rectify the legacies of these errors.
However this is not the entire story either. How, as a citizen of the United States, do we approach Paul Kagame and new African leaders such as himself, who, while capably improving the conditions for their citizens, do so without the existing in the democratic environment that characterizes Western liberal democracy. While Gourevitch asks Kagame some very reasonable questions about his army's conduct in the wake of the genocide, he approaches the, admittedly, charismatic leader, from a point of near reverence. Since the book was authored in 1998, Gourevitch clearly didn't have the knowledge that Kagame and his Ugandan neighbor Yoweri Museveni, whom he bore many similarities, would both be in power over 20 years later. From cursory reading on both leaders' Wikipedia's, while both have done admirable jobs improving economic conditions for their respective peoples and maintaining civil order, they are marred with allegations of suppressing dissenting ideas and foreign interference. Gourevitich, towards the end of the book in his discussion with the ongoing violence stemming from the Rwandan genocide spilling into Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Tanzania, questions if claims such as these are legitimate or if their unfair applications of Western sensibilities to a region where those same sensibilities were voided when Europeans saw opportunities for enrichment and the perpetration of their power. 20 years later, I'm curious what Gourevitch would say to the ongoing critiques of these regimes.
The one area in which I, as well as many other reviewers, would have liked to see Gourevitch delve deeper, was the question of what motivated individual actors, largely bereft of power, to commit acts of violence when called upon by the state. Were they, similar to claims made by the Nazi's, simply following orders as per their nature. Or, was it because many, confronted with a direct way to enforce the minute power afforded to them by their ethnic Hutu identity, felt at though, through the extermination of the Tutsi's, that they would somehow be materially rewarded. And, in both cases, who is ultimately responsible for creating, either a group of people so prone to following order that they would massacre 800,000 of their neighbors, or the ethnic and racial structures that determined power, and by extension value and led to the same conclusion? How long, post colonialization, did it take for Rwanda to truly gain autonomy or was this even a possibility? How long, post-genocide, will it take for Rwanda to truly gain autonomy and can this ethically take place with Western European involvement and the imposition of Western European norms of governance?
Personally, I'm not really sure.
Overall a very necessary, very compelling book.