Read Recently #4:
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
Backstory: I caught the trailer to Hotel Rwanda and decided that I had to see it. I also decided I wanted to know a bit more about the Rwandan genocide before I saw it. I did a search on “Rwandan Genocide” and came up with this book. I had heard about it on This American Life many moons ago.
Notes: As a reporter, Gourevitch is second to none. Voluminously researched, expertly focused on people rather than politics, his book hasso much good material that 350 pages barely seems to contain it. Gourevitch also chooses to finish up the events of the genocide by around page 100 and leaves the remainder to explore the racist ineptitude of the international community’s response. It’s a wise decision which seems to argue that horror, now matter how black, is by definition, brief. What truly tests our humanity are our responses in the aftermath.
Sadly though, this isn’t where book shines. Gourevitch’s look at the power plays between the UN, neighboring countries and a still bitterly divided Rwanda, is well-reported to a fault. Meticulous instead of passionate, careful rather than headstrong, it reads like a well-compiled case study instead of the indictment he had build up over the earlier chapters. The lack of vigor would have also been helped had acknowledged the complexity of the situation though a single cogent arguement (i.e. The international community messed up big time) and then built out from there. Instead he pauses akwardly for macro views that sometimes work but often fall flat.
Verdict: A great learning experience rather that a great read. There isn’t a book out there that will teach you more about Rwanda and the abject failings of the West than this one. But Gourevitch runs out of gas before he delivers on the promise of first 100 pages. Lord, would this book benefit from a second edition. Ten years after perhaps?