The True Story Behind ‘Hotel Rwanda’

By Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner

***** (5/5)

Non-Fiction / Autobiography

Click to buy this book (free delivery)

Book Synopsis:

Paul Rusesabagina’s extraordinary courage inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, which received 3 Academy Award nominations and starred Don Cheadle.

“The killer would not look at me.

In that one small turn of the face, I saw there might be some room for me to maneuver. I saw that I had a small chance to save the lives of thirty-two of my neighbours who were huddled in the cars behind me.

All I needed was to find the right words. Everything now depended on my words…”

During the Rwandan genocide of 2004, Rusesabagina used his position as general manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines to protect over twelve hundred Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus. Though a delicate balance of diplomacy, smooth talking and cautious trickery, he managed to maintain the Hotel des Mille as a safe house, while the madness raged beyond its gates.

Rusesabagina transports the reader to those 100 days of cold-blooded murder, to the torment of those who witnessed their loved ones murdered before them. He relates how he felt as he served liquor and cigars to killers by the hotel’s pool, when just above them, he was attempting to hide as many of their potential victims as he could in the upstairs rooms.

What’s more, he describes his feelings of betrayal and deep disappointment when the international community chose to ignore the genocide.

Rusesabagina’s autobiography reveals the racial complexity of his personal life being a Hutu but married to a Tutsi and his attempt to address the question: What causes a whole nation to go insane?

The strength of Paul Rusesabagina’s character is clear, but more importantly, he was an ordinary man who stepped up and acted with true courage and humility during an extraordinary time.

My Book Review:

Where do I start? This is the personal story of a man who did what he could amidst the unthinkable. 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in just 100 days, the fastest and most efficient genocide in history.

The hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, is the most admirable man I have ever had the privilege of encountering. In the face of brutal chaotic killers, some of them his neighbours, who blindly hacked apart friends, children and the elderly, Rusesabagina, stood calm and rational. He used every word in his power to protect the 1,200 people who were hiding in his hotel.

Rusesabagina begins by explaining the history of Rwandan racial politics. How the disparity of power and apparent facial structure built up over the years, split Rwanda into two, The Hutu’s and The Tutsi’s,  eventually erupted into anarchy and frenzied killing.

The autobiography is divided into 3 parts:

• The history behind Rwanda’s racial politics

• The 100 days during the genocide when Rusesabagina and the refugees were living in the hotel, constantly fending off imminent slaughter and

• Rusesabagina’s life and view of Rwanda after the genocide.

I found I had to distance myself from the descriptions of the horrific killings that are described in the book, in order to sanely get through reading it. Despite the almost unimaginable events, this was surprisingly a very easy book to read.

Easy to read for 2 reasons:

1) Rusesabagina is an amiable and humble man, with unmatchable integrity.

2) Because it is important. It is important to know this history that is so recent we should consider it the present. It is important to see and respect men like Paul Rusesabagina and know that words and non-violence really can work in real life.

I thought The Holocaust would have been lesson enough, but this is the list of genocides from Wikipedia that have occurred between 1951 to 2000:

Australia (1900-1969), Zanzibar, Guatemala, Bangladesh War of 1971, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Cambodia, East Timor, Argentina, Sabra-Shatila in Lebanon, Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iraqi Kurds, Tibet, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Azerbaijan, West New Guinea/West Papua and Sri Lanka.

It would be so easy to write these mass killings off as ‘things of the past’ or ‘things that only happen elsewhere’. We live privileged lives in cushy 1st world countries, and as we discover in An Ordinary Man, it was countries like ours who could have put a stop to the mindless slaughter. But we didn’t. The world did nothing. Even with 2,700 UN troops stationed in Rwanda, Rusesabagina says:

“In my opinion the UN was not just useless during the genocide. It was more then useless. It would have been better off for us if they did not exist at all, because it allowed the world to think that something was being done, that some parental figure was minding the store.”

Rusesabagina made endless calls and faxes to government bodies, including the White House, but was ignored every time. There is a passage in which he describes a conversation he had with a woman at the White House. It will make your blood boil.

Paul Rusesabagina speaks plainly and sincerely. Watch the movie and read the book. This is present and possibly continuing history.

x Julie

Book Shop and Book Reviews

-Reading Like Rabbits-

by Harper Lee

****~ (4/5)

Click to buy this book (free delivery)

Book synopsis:

”Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember, it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this enchanting classic – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl.

Thorough the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.

The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man’s struggle for justice.

But the weight of history will only tolerate so much…

Why I like this book:

I have a long affiliation with To Kill a Mockingbird. I studied it in secondary school, then in Junior College I was in the drama club production of it. I had two lines: “Scout’s daddy defends niggers!’ and “Slut!”. And in February 2010, I will be playing Scout at The Drama Centre in Singapore. This is why I recently read the book again, as well as the play version by Christopher Sergel.

I enjoyed reading To Kill A Mockingbird all three times I have read it. I was 14 the first time and found the first few pages too confusing, so I skipped the first chapter going on to thoroughly enjoy the rest of the novel.

The play is very much a watered down version of the thick Southern atmosphere and action of the novel. It’s very much like watching movie versions of good books you’ve read, they rarely compare.

The book however is extremely lulling and comfortable. [I know this is a strange description for a book about the injustice of racism, but the 'goodie' characters whom you get to know throughout the novel, who live in this sleepy town of Maycomb, are lulling in nature and they do make you comfortable to know that there good people in this world.] It’s full of good natured and upright characters in an unjust and colour-coded world. The children, brother and sister Scout/Jean Louise and Jem with their little friend Dill, speak from a confused and innocent child’s perspective. They learn how they should live and discover the world in which they want to live in. This is one of the most important aspects of the book, that to a child, race doesn’t mean anything unless it is cultivated . Children are taught to be racist, or they learn to be racist, the blank slate is filled with whatever it touches.

To Kill a Mockingbird possesses the danger of becoming preachy with Atticus their father, and their neighbour Miss Maudie extolling pearls of wisdom on behaviour and conduct. However, as a reader you understand that there are people like the bigoted Bob Ewel, and then there are sympathetic and honest people like Atticus. He has little influence on a public scale, but is able to hold on to his personal integrity and ideals, and more importatly educate his children so they grow into compassionate adults. He leads by example and you respect him for that.

Harper Lee’s handling of this subject matter ironically necessitates this kind of black and white approach with the characters behaviour. As an educational and growing tool, I think this is a crucial textbook to life – these kinds of accusations and sham trials actually occurred in 1930s America, and beyond, I was shocked to find out – from the false accusation of the Scottsboro boys, to the brutal murder of Emmett Till (whose white killers walked away scott free). I think this book will stay in the school literature syllabuses for a long long while.

To Kill a Mockingbird’s content is infuriating, charming and admirable. This novel has been described as having two parts, a trial story with Atticus defending the black Tom Robinson who is accused of raping a white girl, and a kind of distant love story between Boo Radley and the children. I want to be as noble as Atticus, as free spirited as Scout and secretly I identify with the reclusive and elusive Boo Radley.

x Julie

Book Reviews

- Reading Like Rabbits