The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After

The title of the book refers to a story Wamariya heard from her nanny Mukamana, in which a girl who smiled beads escapes into the distance, the beads she leaves behind the only evidence of her presence. Wamariya identifies with the girl who smiled beads, who becomes “the answer to all puzzles” (210). The girl “is always safe, there but not there, one step ahead;” she is “undeniably strong and brave,” and she has “agency over her life” (210). Wamariya wants to “believe those things were possible” for her (210). She imagines that she herself would leave people “in her wake, like fairy dust” (210), and that she would be gone before anyone could catch her. At the end of her memoir Wamariya explains that the girl who smiled beads has taught her to “believe in [her] own agency” (263) but that, just as Mukamana allowed her to dictate the events of her stories, she needs to create her own narrative. Writing this book is a step in that journey.

Like the girl who smiled beads, whose presence was known only by the gifts she left, Wamariya’s true self is elusive to those around her.