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Summary: Great book; evokes emotion, empathy
Review: Any book that can grab your attention and keep it is a marvel. A book that can evoke emotion is even that much better. This book, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, does both. The true stories of Rwandans, what they went through, felt, saw, and experienced, are amazing. The tribulation these people went through is something no human being should ever have to go through. I think what the author does in telling these stories and sharing their world with others is of the utmost importance. To shed light on what really happened is taking steps toward never allowing this type of genocide to happen again. It's important that others know what really happened, feel sympathetic toward these people, and make every effort to never let it happen again.
I can only imagine the effort, time, and research the author, Philip Gourevitch, must have put forth for this book. I think he does an excellent job. He covers all the bases, including Rwanda's history, personal experiences, politics, interviews, and descriptive scenes. It's very thorough. He also makes no predictions about Rwanda's future, which I think is appropriate, because Rwanda's future is uncertain. With such an unstable past, he would be a fool to try and predict its future. He also seems to know where he stands in the book. Unlike some authors, who claim to be experts or political activists in their books, he claims to be no such thing. He simple tells the story, sometimes including his own emotions, but to no political agenda.
I think everyone should read this book, or at least parts of it, to get a real sense of the atrocities some people have to go through. We are all too self-inclusive in our lives, only worried about our own little world. This book makes you look outside your world and into the world of a people deeply troubled with real worries and a real sense of appreciating life. If we simply ignore those around us and turn a deaf ear to those people in need of help, does that not make us just as horrible as the Hutus that massacre their neighbors like they were animals? They are not animals, which is one thing I believe Gourevitch tried to show. He told stories of both the Hutus and the Tutsis, showing how they are human beings, not animals and not deserving of the massacre they received.
I cried during several parts of this book and sometimes had a hard time putting it down even though it was so depressing I didn't want to read it anymore. But I'm glad I did, and I feel the better for it. Not only is this book educational, but it's stirring, evoking real emotion and thought. I have to give it 5 stars. Even though it was a tad long, I can see why the author included everything he did, and I don't know what I would have him cut out.
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Summary: The best book on the Rwandan genocide
Review: This book is simply the BEST book on the Rwandan genocide. It begins by exploring Rwanda past and the colonial initiatives that exacerbated a tribal conflict. It shows how years ot Tutsi rule infuriated the Hutu majority and turned them into beasts worse then the SS.The author explores individual cases of people adn the memories they faced. He takes a sharp cirtique to the U.N and the world community who sat by and watched. He carefully lays out the lies perpetrated by the French and Belgium troops in the country that watched as people were butchered in front of them. The author explored the obivous nature of the genocide as rivers choaked with bodies polluted the lakes of Kenya it was obivous what was happening. Once again, as was the case of the Jews in Germany, we see a minority people subjected to brutal behavior and not fighting back. it seems the curse of people chosen for genocide that tehy are always the weakest people who chose not to fight to the death. The Tutsi community allowed itself to be herded like cattle and watched as their relatives were butchered. The author explores the legacy of 'Justice' in rwanda. he shows how many war criminals are now living here in the U.S and the world does nothing. The author shows how the U.N only seemed to become upset when the Tutsi rebel army took back the country and the U.N was suddenly worried about 'retalitaion'. Apparnetly the U.N doesnt mind if you murder a million people but when one of those people decides to take a little vengance then all of a sudden the U.N steps in to stop the criminals from getting a taste of their own medicine. The author goes on to show how the U.N helped to arm the committers of genocide as they fed them in refuggee camps. THe U.N supported the former war criminals as they fled to congo and continued the campaign of genocide. The U.N did everything except helping the victims, the U.N only helped the prepetrators. This is a wonderful book where you will learn that the world will never change. The U.N and the 'world community' loves genocide and the more people you murder the more they will support you. If you are a peaceful nation like Tibet the U.N will ignore you and give you no aid. But if you are brutal like Saddam or Pol Pot the U.N will spend years helpign you and feeding you and your people. This is the lesson of the Rwandan genocide. If you want to prevent genocide you shyould arm yourself and fight to the death because no one is going to save you, the TUtsis learned this the hard way, like the Jews and the Armenians.
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Summary: Useful classroom tool for Instructors, Professors, etc.
Review: This review is aimed at instructors looking for a good initial book to draw students into the subject of International and/or Comparative Politics. High school, undergraduate and even graduate instructors will find this book very useful in classes that deal with International Politics, Comparative politics, Modern History, Colonialism, Ethnicity, and other similar topics. I use this as a first reading in my Comparative politics classes. For most students this is the first they have heard of the genocide in Rwanda and it really helps to open up classroom discussion about the role of politics and the state in "real life." It is a fairly easy read, although obviously the subject matter can make it difficult to get through. Most students High School and above will find its language clear and compelling, which also helps them get into the idea of reading for the course. Some good talking points that came out of discussion on the book: Is Gourevitch presenting a one-sided argument and is that okay? What role does colonialism play in shaping the present day reality in Africa? Why did the UN not intervene sooner? What is ethnicity exactly if not based on race or language is it still ethnicity? What role does the state have in strong societies?
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Summary: Masterful and humane account
Review: This was an excellent account of an incomprehensible horror. Gourevitch presents the Rwandan genocide with a skillful balance of anecdote and analysis, and a justified sense of moral outrage. How could "civilized" Western governments have done nothing, or worse? Is there any hope that the U.N. can ever become a muscular agent of enforcement in this world? This was a spectacular failure of international will, and more than ever do we need to invest in a strong, independent body that operates from humanitarian values rather than provincial self-interest.
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Summary: an invisible genocide investigated
Review: In the invisible continent of Africa, a million can die in state-sponsored genocide without making any great impact on the West. This is a movingly written, well researched, and immensely troubling account of the history and events of and surrounding the 1994 war in Rwanda that destabilized all of central Africa. The current "First African World War" in Congo, another invisible war that has claimed more lives than any conflict since WWII, is indebted to this earlier conflict of its neighbor. Africa was scarred and humanity tainted. You ought to read about it.
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Summary: Read this book!
Review: I wish someone had urged me to read this book 5 years ago. I can't speak highly enough of it. It deserves more than five stars. So now I urge you to read it. The book's subtitle is deceiving. It gave me the impression that this was a collection of different news stories. I couldn't imagine how a bunch of news stories about Rwanda could be "riveting." So I borrowed the book from the public library because I was afraid I'd find it dull. The book *is* riveting. Now that I've read it, I want to buy it. Each story builds *the* story. The author's comments on the stories and the way he relates the history add so much to it. Unlike a history book, _We wish to inform you_ doesn't just spit out facts; the facts are personalized. My only criticism is that this book really should have included an acronym list. Part 2 contained so many acronyms that, although they were initially spelled out, I had a hard time remembering which meant what.
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Summary: Too Horrifying to be Ignored
Review: The appalling genocide in Rwanda in 1994 passed with little notice in the United States or the rest of the West. The fact that thousands of Tutsis were being hunted down and slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors didn't register with most of us until after the worst of the tragedy was over and the piles of bodies began to be buried. This willfull ignorance is ironic because, as Gourevitch makes clear, the massacre was a direct result of Western imperialist policies and interference in the indigenous tribal system of Rwanda. The book is a quick read, not because the subject matter is easy to digest, but because it is so horrifying that it can't be put down or dismissed. I hope this book helps to personalize the horror of Rwanda in 1994 in the same way Anne Frank's diary evokes the Holocaust.
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Summary: Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity
Review: Philip Gourevitch, author of We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families (1998), writes that the civil war in Rwanda in 1994 produced few heroes. However, in the midst of the horror, Gourevitch points out that Paul Rusesabagina the quick-witted and courageous Hutu hotel manager of the Hotel des Mille Colline, a luxury hotel in central Kigali owned by Sabena airlines, managed to save more than a thousand people. Many people who were slated for death wound up at this hotel. They were fortunate enough to find refuge in what was one of the only safe places in Rwanda. Two medical doctors Odette Nyiramilimo, her husband Dr Jean Baptiste Gasasira and their children ended up at this hotel. Many Tutsis were kept safe there. Gourevitch describes how Rusesabagina spent his days buying lives of Tutsis with liquor, reasoning, persuading, so that each band of killers who came to the hotel to take out various Tutsis on their lists for killing somehow ended up going away. Rusesabagina would then stay up until four in the morning using the one phone line, which the Hutu power authorities had not managed to cut off, as they did not know its number. He would send faxes to Bill Clinton, ring the French Foreign Ministry, ring the King of Belgium, and tell them what was going on. Gourevitch says that although Rusesabagina may not have seen what he did as heroic, he still saved many lives. Something that almost everyone else was unable or unwilling to do. None of the people who took shelter at the hotel were killed during the genocide and none were killed at a small number of other sites under foreign protection, like the hospital in Kigali run by Doctors Without Borders and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Perhaps these sanctuaries could not have been replicated so successfully elsewhere. But certainly it would have been right to try. In 2000, Rusesabagina was the recipient of the Immortal Chaplains Prize for Humanity and was running a transport company in Brussels Belgium, and is still exceptionally modest about what he did. Best Regards, David S. Fick,
Author of Entrepreneurship in Africa: A Study of Successes (March 2002)
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Summary: Tutsis and Hutus
Review: Philip Gouervitch has made a great contribution to the world with this great book which is impossible to not understand even though you may not know from top of your head where Rwanda is in the world map and let alone who the Hutus and Tutsis are. It's a non-fiction book that reads like a novel or I should better say like an yet unwritten book by Stephen King as it is SCARY like hell. Animosity amongst two tribes or nations or individuals in an un-civilised part of the world is a living nightmare.
One can not imagine what could possibly happen when it comes to just a small bit of power to any side that it may be. It was Hutus turn this time and Tutsis are the victims. Hutus are out of their mind,brainwashed,starving for blood of innocent,unprotected Tutsis. Even through the radio waves the words such as these came out: "Don't spare and don't have mercy on any Tutsi at all - children or women". 5 and a half people (Tutsis) were killed within one minute by Hutus.UN was there, but was not able to do anything about this terror. I can imagine how hard it must have been for them watching the crazed tribe trying to eliminate another one in the most cruelest ways - and not being able or ordered to help the innocent Tutsis by stopping Hutus. The result of Hutus madness totaled to at least 800.000 thousand people murdered. Godness me, I can not think of a sadder thing but when the human's lives become numbers. Now after I've read this book I often think 800.000 lives like the one I am living right now have been taken away.And my life is precious,everyone's life is precious so was theirs and yet they have lost it while I was (along with billions of people) probably listening to music, or while I was watching a comedy - and not having a clue that Rwanda or Hutus or Tutsis even existed. I have to go now,and play my favorite song "Imagine" by John Lennon and pray for a better and safer precious world we live in.
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Summary: Riveting, Emotional Read
Review: This had to be the best book I've read so far this year in terms of how gripping it was and how powerfully it evoked every emotion from anger to grief to cynicism to despair. I am an avid and usually fast reader, but I found myself having to read slowly and digest the information and re-read lots of passages. So much of it was simply unbelieveable and incomprehensible to me. I appreciated the author's style of using interviews with Rwandans, covering the history, and particularly describing the aftermath of the genocide which I had no knowledge of. Every Westerner should read this book. I feel like I am a more conscious human being having read this book.
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