Books: Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak

Thinking about what it must have been like to survive the horror of genocide and wondering about what it would take to pull yourself together after living through something like that and to somehow try to move on, made me feel a little bit better equipped to deal with my own apparent reality.

The truth is - each of us really is much stronger than we likely give ourselves credit for.

Our capacity for survival and our ability to thrive as a result is far greater than our ability to imagine. A Life Laid Bare encourages me because it reminds me that I am strong.

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From Amazon.com:

French journalist and war correspondent Hatzfeld offers brief, pithy accounts of 14 survivors of the three-day Rwandan genocide of 1994, in which 10,000 Tutsis seeking refuge in churches were slaughtered by machete-wielding Hutus. The survivors describe both devastation, as neighbors with whom [they] used to chat became executioners, and the degradation of later being marginalized by Rwandan society. Announcing their presence with whistles and songs, the Hutu killers arrived regularly in the morning and left in the late afternoon, their violent sprees corresponding with victims' efforts to hide the children in small groups under the papyrus at sunrise, and to emerge from hiding places in the marsh when the killers had finished their work at sunset. Even though each account tells the same harrowing story, each voice is unique. Bringing cumulative power to what, in lesser hands, might have been a random collection of historical accounts, Hatzfeld's wrenching collection compels an active response to the genocides occurring today.

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