4 audiobooks that tell personal stories

2. 'The Girl Who Smiled Beads,' by Clementine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil

"The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After, "by Clementine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil

Read by Robin Miles with an afterward read by Wamariya; Random House Audio; eight CDs; nine hours; $40/Audible download; $28

         In order to survive the Rwandan genocide in 1994, six-year-old Wamariya fled her home with an older sister and traveled through seven African countries, feeling “unwanted by everyone,” before being resettled in America. Unlike most memoirists, Wamariya does not present her best self, but shows us her true self. Angry, alienated, and distrustful, Wamariya reveals the unvarnished face of those victimized by war and what it takes to get back on track. Miles does a fine job with African pronunciations, but she sounds very American and polished. She aptly expresses emotion and there are no complaints except that this would have hit harder if told with a slight Rwandan accent. 

Grade: A

 

 

2 of 4

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.