A review by black_girl_reading
Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga

5.0

Scholastique Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile is a story of the rising crescendo of anti-Tutsi sentiment that foretold the Rwandan genocide, set against the bucolic backdrop of an elite French Christian private girls school located near the purported source of the Nile in the Rwandan mountains. Told almost in a series of vignettes, the book highlighted how the French contributed to what was to come, and how an uncertain peace was undermined by a simmering anger fuelled by years of inequity and propaganda. It examined how these girls were shaped so much by patriarchal pressures, from priests who idealized them, to teachers who sexualized them, to an entire education predicated on cultivating the ability to find a powerful and wealthy spouse upon graduation, and finally to the threat of sexual assault as a tactic of annihilation. Perhaps most of all, this book named how growing intolerance can mutate into profound violence, and seemingly catch so many unawares despite all of the warning signs. This book was a quiet power that escalated convincingly and brutally, and having found it by chance, I can’t say enough how I want everyone to find it on purpose.