Hi all!
Just checking in to see if anyone else has finished yet?

i didn't finish! i can't find my book! grrr! i think it might be at my mom's and i'm going there tonight...fingers crossed....

I finished it. I did a lot of skimming. The background of growing up and the follow up of adjusting to the US are not nearly as gripping as the event itself. THAT is absolutely incomprehensible. I found my mind almost paralyzed. If I think at all, I will think about that, and I don't want to, so don't think.

LeAnne-
I felt the same way. The start was slow - but the event was horrifying.

Sounds like you ran into the problem I did with the "Red River" selection. I commented on the Burundi thread.

I'm still reading it!!! and I'm finding it quite interesting. Could we continue our discussion into May? (sorry that i'm so slow...)

i found my books!! muphyn...which are you reading at the moment...i barely started "this voice" so i could easily switch to "red river." where are we supposed to discuss? i'd like to discuss if others are up to it. but it sounds like these were difficult reads on a visceral level which is possibly hampering conversation?

i'm reading "this voice..." (ended up being more accessible than "red river"). i'm probably not far enough into it to make any "assessment" on how difficult it is but i'm keen to discuss it here. melanie, did you have any thoughts? anything you wanted to discuss?

Okay then will stick with "this voice". I think I'm at the point when something is about to happen because school is not normal.

hey, yes i'm up to the same point in the story!! :)

Of course when I was reading, I could think of all sorts of things to discuss - but when asked my mind just went blank :)

Mainly I was just amazed at the will of the human spirit (I know that probably sounds cliche), especially when he is trapped with the others in the building. I don't want to go into detail because I know everyone isn't at that spot in the book yet. Basically the whole time I was reading, I guess I was just wondering if I would have the strength to do the things he did to survive. His courage and strength really just blew me away.

hi guys,
i'm about 3/4s through the book. oh boy. i have a biggish question but i'll wait until i'm through with the book so i can get all my thoughts together.

i just read a really interesting article about rwanda in the new yorker...life there 15 years after the genocide and how victims and perpetrators feel about the gacaca courts, hutus and tutsis living together again, paul kagame's ideas about rwanda and the world, and hutu-tutsi cross-border issues (congo, not burundi). even though it's not about burundi, i still felt like i should mention it in case anyone wants to read it. unfortunately they don't provide online access to the article:http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/04/090504fa_fact_gourevitch but libraries should have hard copies or electronic copies available. let me know privately if you really want to read it and are having trouble accessing it.

the author talks about it here and it is accessible to those without subscriptions:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/2009/05/...

so here's the thing i wanted to ask about...i've read a couple of books and articles by rwandans about the genocide. i think this was my first book by someone from burundi. but it seems that whenever i read about what happened in the two countries in the early 90s, it is written by a tutsi or from a tutsi perspective. the writer always expresses confusion (and rightly so) but bases the confusion on 'we always lived together. we are the same' and one writer explicitly called the hutu/tutsi nomenclature (for lack of a better term) a european invention...that there were never two "ethnic" groups in rwanda...there is just one language and one people...its just that some were farmers and some were herders. the europeans tampered and the tutsis recognized the preferred status they got during the colonial period, but they still felt like one people with hutus...despite periodic pogroms prior to the 1990s conflagration...anyway, the tutsi accounts always ask "why?"

do hutus typically feel like one people with tutsis?

and what about intermarriage? it seems pretty common...can people really look at another person and know for sure if they are "hutu" or "tutsi"? how do people really identify and how do they handle other people determining their identity for them (when its not a life-or-death situation)?

so....my question is...are there hutu accounts, like tutsi accounts, of what happened? or has the history of hutu-tutsi relations/the genocide of the 90s been written entirely by tutsis? if they exist, has anyone read hutu narratives?

I can't answer the question, but I wanted to add a suggestion for further reading. I'm reading Blood River, by Tim Butcher about DRC. It's great, but also in reading it and looking at reviews I came across "Africa's World War:Congo, the Rwanda Genocide and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe" by Gerald Prunier. I haven't gotten ahold of the book yet, but it seems like it might answer some questions and confusions I have about the relationships among the govts. in the region, the various "rebel" groups (can't really call them that if they aren't operating in their own country?) etc. Maybe others will find these interesting.

yes, thanks, andrea! i have not heard of those books.
it is really a confusing region...the whole eastern congo situation is awful and perplexing. among other problems, the Hutu-Tutsi conflict continues even though people like to say that the genocide was 15 years ago.

another book with an interesting perspective might beOut of America A Black Man Confronts Africa, a memoir by Keith Richburg, a black american journalist who was the Africa bureau chief for the Washington Post from 1991 to 1994.

I've only just finished "This voice..." (slow me, yeah i know) but i want to comment on a couple of things anyway.

marieke, you raised some interesting thoughts and articulated some of what i felt subconsciously with your questions re. burundi/rwanda history being "written" by tutsis. what struck me was exactly Tuhabonye... not being able to account for the violence. and maybe that was just his sheltered upbringing in the mountains away from the cities or maybe it was some sort of naiveté or blindness to what was really going on around him. i don't know... but it's the same problem i have with germans during WWII and not "knowing" what was going on. i just feel that people know when to look away in order to remain ignorant (but maybe i'm taking things completely out of context/perspective here...).

so, i think it would be really interesting to read a book written from a hutu perspective - that could be quite enlightening. just to reiterate what marieke said, if anybody is aware of any such book, please post details!

i can't say the book really gripped me, it was really just ok for me. the sloppy editing bothered me and i know that he must have experienced horrific events but they didn't really touch me (unusual for me). i don't exactly know what it was but the book left me a bit cold. i think i even found his childhood memories more interesting than the event itself (maybe it was because the event itself was set in italics in my edition and i hate reading long stretches in italics - maybe that put me in a bad mood). ;)

i found the bits about running actually really interesting, how he trained for events and improved his fitness and running style. so maybe i should just read a memoir about a runner! ;)

all in all, i think i found it just a bit too shallow. he mentioned that he had trouble forgiving people and to heal emotionally but he didn't really go into the healing process much or explored that side of things (considering the title says something about healing and forgiveness...).