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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will…
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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (original 1998; edition 1999)

by Philip Gourevitch

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3,468663,668 (4.41)106
The title of the book comes from a letter written to Paston Elizaphan Ntakirutimana. In it, several Advent pastors, hiding in a hospital state, "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families..." (p 42). Such a devastating cry for help...only to end in betrayal. But probably the most helpless and hopeless line in the book (for me anyway), was "I took it we were under attack, and did nothing because I had no idea what to do" (p 33). I can't imagine knowing full well murderers were coming for me, and yet having no idea how to save myself. Imagine having nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. No way to protect yourself. Heartbreaking. Like macabre trick or treating, gangs went from town to town, just looking for people to massacre.
I find myself asking over and over again how neighbors, friends, relatives, business partners could rise up against their brethren. To kill over and over again with such horrific brutality. Not just an impersonal shot to the head. Not just a quick execution from a far off distance, but an up-close and personal hacking, slashing, chopping; a hand to hand combat/rape/pillage with machetes and knives, sticks and stony rage. The willingness, the eagerness to turn on people you had once worked, lived, learned or played side by side. Colleagues killed colleagues. Neighbors annihilated neighbors. Teachers assassinated their students. Friends turned one another with surprising ease. Gourevitch tries to make sense of it in We Wish to Inform You... by going back historically and analyzing the time before the genocide. His style is to think about the subject from a distance and then living with it up close. He walks around a topic to scrutinize it from every angle. His focus was to ask what really happened and how its aftermath is understood today (at the time of his writing). ( )
1 vote SeriousGrace | Jan 5, 2021 |
English (65)  German (1)  All languages (66)
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Not as grim as I was expecting. ( )
  Castinet | Dec 11, 2022 |
Amazing book teaching the reader what really happened in the Rwanda genocide of the Tutsis by the Hutus. Some a-hole white guy made the mistake of saying that Tutsis were more aristocratic than the Hutus (Hamitic myth). Hutus were pissed off about the fact that Tutsis belonged to the ruling class so with help from France (Mitterand), Hutus all over this small country hacked, bludgeoned and shot to death all the Tutsis they could find, in 1994. This horrible event was ignored by the international community and when Tutsi refugees tried to flee, Hutus went with them to refugee camps in Zaire and Tanzania. They knew that aid workers wouldn't know which were which, so they, along with the French and Belgium soldiers, took all the food and policed the refugee camps themselves. So, when some humanitarian organization asks you to"feed the hungry," just remember to whom your dollars will go. (Moreover, at least 75¢ out of$1 will go to overhead).
The genocide of Tutsis continued for years and years, and this struggling little nation has had to do all the work of rebuilding their home and trying to bring the genocidaires to justice without any help from the major powers who blocked their efforts every step of the way.
Gourevitch spent years researching his book. I thank the author for making me aware of a genocide that I (shockingly) just became aware of. No wonder the world hates us. ( )
  burritapal | Oct 23, 2022 |
An incredible recounting of the Rwandan genocide that sheds a lot of light across the atrocity of the different players and motivations involved. It is harrowing and chilling but also incredibly well written. Well worth the read whether you are interested in Rwandan history or not. ( )
  renbedell | Feb 6, 2022 |
Holy critter. I started this book knowing the Rwandan genocide was basically composed of Hutus killing Tutsis in the mid-1990s, and ended it with a radically transformed mindset toward so many institutions and people and ideas. Chief among them is the UN and the international community as a whole, who are perhaps the most responsible, I think, for ignoring the genocide and facilitating the massacres that followed it.

The book itself was easy to read, surprisingly, since it dealt with some of the most unfathomable human situations to have transpired in recent history. My only problem with Gourevitch is that he never really got to the red-hot human center of the Rwandan genocide: How were so many of the Hutus so completely inhuman? How could they have done what they did? It's true that he explains the history leading up to the genocide, but he never really investigates the thought processes that guided the Hutus in their rampage. Because of that, I felt like he cheated us out of a 100% complete understanding of the conflict.

Overall, however, this book was one of the most illuminating I have ever read. ( )
  Gadi_Cohen | Sep 22, 2021 |
Incredible writing, incredibly important, yet extremely emotionally taxing. ( )
  echinops | Aug 18, 2021 |
Like many others, I was interested to learn more about the genocide in Rwanda, and thought this highly rated book would be a good source. In my opinion, it failed to explain the genesis of the deep seated hatred by the Hutu tribe of the Tutsi tribe, and was extremely dry/dull. There was little connection with the characters: it felt like a textbook.

I thought The Girl Who Smiled Beads was much better. ( )
  skipstern | Jul 11, 2021 |
A very difficult topic that was researched and investigated very thoroughly. The situation in Rwanda and the lack of international intervention is shameful. I found this book hard to read but was glad for the insight and the various points of view that the journalist shared. Well worth the read if you are attempting to learn about this awful period of time in Rwanda history. ( )
  tinkerbellkk | May 24, 2021 |
The title of the book comes from a letter written to Paston Elizaphan Ntakirutimana. In it, several Advent pastors, hiding in a hospital state, "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families..." (p 42). Such a devastating cry for help...only to end in betrayal. But probably the most helpless and hopeless line in the book (for me anyway), was "I took it we were under attack, and did nothing because I had no idea what to do" (p 33). I can't imagine knowing full well murderers were coming for me, and yet having no idea how to save myself. Imagine having nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. No way to protect yourself. Heartbreaking. Like macabre trick or treating, gangs went from town to town, just looking for people to massacre.
I find myself asking over and over again how neighbors, friends, relatives, business partners could rise up against their brethren. To kill over and over again with such horrific brutality. Not just an impersonal shot to the head. Not just a quick execution from a far off distance, but an up-close and personal hacking, slashing, chopping; a hand to hand combat/rape/pillage with machetes and knives, sticks and stony rage. The willingness, the eagerness to turn on people you had once worked, lived, learned or played side by side. Colleagues killed colleagues. Neighbors annihilated neighbors. Teachers assassinated their students. Friends turned one another with surprising ease. Gourevitch tries to make sense of it in We Wish to Inform You... by going back historically and analyzing the time before the genocide. His style is to think about the subject from a distance and then living with it up close. He walks around a topic to scrutinize it from every angle. His focus was to ask what really happened and how its aftermath is understood today (at the time of his writing). ( )
1 vote SeriousGrace | Jan 5, 2021 |
This is what excellent journalism looks like. Chilling, providing facts and explanations and asking the penetrating moral and ethical questions, giving blame everywhere it is deserved. An important, well-written book about a brutal chapter in the 20th century. ( )
  askannakarenina | Sep 16, 2020 |
This is what excellent journalism looks like. Chilling, providing facts and explanations and asking the penetrating moral and ethical questions, giving blame everywhere it is deserved. An important, well-written book about a brutal chapter in the 20th century. ( )
  askannakarenina | Sep 16, 2020 |
This is what excellent journalism looks like. Chilling, providing facts and explanations and asking the penetrating moral and ethical questions, giving blame everywhere it is deserved. An important, well-written book about a brutal chapter in the 20th century. ( )
  askannakarenina | Sep 16, 2020 |
This is what excellent journalism looks like. Chilling, providing facts and explanations and asking the penetrating moral and ethical questions, giving blame everywhere it is deserved. An important, well-written book about a brutal chapter in the 20th century. ( )
  askannakarenina | Sep 16, 2020 |
Unlike many other Western journalists, Gourevitch is very self-critical of his own attitudes. It seems that after writing this book, he has not even come to terms with what he learned. He readily admits the absurdity of the the Western countries, the UN, and the citizens of Rwanda.

I appreciate the history of Rwanda, the Hutus, and the Tutsis that Gourevitch gives. Between lessons on history and governance, Gourevitch tells the stories of common folk that he met after the genocide as well as extensive interviews with Paul Kagame. A good part of the book actually discusses the post-genocide crisis that developed when the Hutus fled the country. ( )
  mvblair | Aug 9, 2020 |
This was a much more political work than I had originally imagined from the emotive title. Nonetheless it was pretty readable and is really an account par excellence of the 1994 Rwanda massacre. Gourevitch considers the event from every possible angle:
- the European influence that initially promoted the 'racially superior' minority Tutsis...and the later more egalitarian rulers who started pushing for the rights of the oppressed Hutu
-the support of western governments of sundry entirely corrupt rulers
-the pathetically ineffectual UN forces
-and, perhaps most strikingly, the refusal of 'aid agencies' to do anything concrete to halt the killings;. A the Hutu aggressors fled to Zaire and set up huge refugee camps, billions of pounds of aid was diverted to these apparent victims- regardless of fact that many were guilty of horrific bloodshed. Gourevitch relates the naive, sunny assurances of youthful aid workers that the victims need to put it behind them and live in harmony...even as the culprits flood back in from Zaire, often resuming their violent activities...and facing no punishment.

This is a sobering, thought-provoking work that shows the huge and impossible mess that Rwanda is up against; and the criminal inadequacy of those we look to for guidance (the UN! Peace keeping forces! Western governments!) ( )
  starbox | Mar 18, 2020 |
I first began this book about a month before my first trip to Rwanda in 2011. Looking back at my scribblings, I see that I was simultaneously reading Gorillas in the Mist and having nightmares of being hacked to death with a machete in my sleep. Not the best way to prep for a trip, so I put both books aside. It's now 2014, 20 years since the genocide against the Tutsi, and I have been back and forth to Rwanda several times. Time to get over myself.

We Wish to Inform You is gripping reportage with first-hand accounts from victims, perpetrators, rescuers, aid workers, and political and military operatives. Once I started it this time, there was no stopping...and no nightmares. Please read this book if you have any interest in Rwanda, NGOs, genocide, colonialism, politics, and/or humanity. ( )
  revafisheye | Jan 10, 2020 |
All at once, as it seemed, something we could have only imagined was upon us—and we could still only imagine it. This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.

This was a very difficult book to read, and an even harder book to review. If it wasn't for my library's year-long reading challenge, and the prompt to "read a book written by a journalist", I never would have even picked this up. But I'm so glad I did, however horrible it was to read. It explained a lot of the questions I had about this dark time. My only other knowledge of the Rwandan Genocide came entirely from the film Hotel Rwanda, which really only showed a select part of the story, and left a great deal of context out. It's a fantastic film, and I do really recommend it, but this book definitely far surpasses it in terms of information and educational value.

This book is split into two main parts, and in general, they follow first the events leading up to and including the massacre, and then the aftermath and recovery efforts (if some of them can even be called that). It's a tiring tale with apocalyptic elements straight out of a far-fetched science fiction novel. It feels a little unreal sometimes, this dark age story from just a few years before I was born. It feels anachronistic but then, looking at the world I live in now, so very relevant and intrinsically real.

The massacre itself, this cruel act of genocide, was, and I feel wrong admitting this, my favorite part of the book. It was straightforwardly awful, and there was some part of it that was morbidly fascinating. Gourevitch addresses this phenomenon directly and gives excellent commentary on it without either condemning or condoning. This same very direct but equally objective perspective pervades the entire book, and I really appreciated it.

"It sometimes happens that some people tell lies and others tell the truth."

The part that disgusted me beyond even the senseless slaughter itself was the reaction or lack thereof on the part of the international community, primarily regarding America and France. I guess people just want to ignore that the French actively supplied the Hutu aggressors and that the world refused to call this a genocide lest they be required to give any aid whatsoever. And when they were forced to help, they continued to help those doing the killing and ignored those who suffered the most. And why? For what? What could have possibly made these modern nations commit such atrocities?

"You cannot count on the international community unless you're rich, and we are not[...] We don't have oil, so it doesn't matter that we have blood, or that we are human beings."

And it makes sense: look at the USA's constant neglect of even its own people in recent years and throughout history, as seen in the Michigan water crisis, in post-hurricane Puerto Rico, and in the systematic abuse of African Americans and Mexican immigrants, particularly children. What seems, at face value, wrong and illogical -- that first world countries in the modern age could be so cruel and unusual against their fellow man -- is actually very, very believable.

And when Rwanda tried to recover on its own, it was attacked again from all angles, from within and from without.

"It's not so much the human rights concerns, it's more political. It's 'Let's kill this development, this dangerous development of these Africans trying to do things their own way.'"

This book taught me that human nature is complicated and sometimes very extreme, that people hold grudges, sometimes senselessly and sometimes with good reason. That people can be tipped over the edge and will keep falling until either they or their enemy are dead. What I learned will stick with me forever. In this age of mass killings every other day, it's something I can hardly ever forget. ( )
  Faith_Murri | Dec 9, 2019 |
800,000 or more Rwandans were killed in 1994 by fellow Rwandans in the “most Christianized country in Africa.” According to one Christian leader, Muslims were the only religious community that didn’t kill during this episode. Journalist Phillip Gourevitch attempts to explain the bloodbath. His book, which concludes with the nation’s situation not yet solved, is the kind that is cited when later histories are written. It is impressive for how much he found to report and how deeply he has thought about what happened.

The conflict seemed simple. Hutus slaughtered Tutsis—the old story of ethnic grievance. Except . . . until 1959 “there had never been systematic political violence recorded between Hutus and Tutsis—anywhere.” Finding the ignition points is vital to Gourevitch, for once set in motion Rwanda proved a genocide can happen far faster than seems imaginable, even when executed with rudimentary weapons. Among factors he identifies is the dark poison of colonial attitudes well-illustrated by François Mitterrand’s declaration that “In such countries, genocide is not too important.” Oh?

Cue Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

“Why the killing?” wasn’t the only question to explore. For the rebuilding and healing of Rwandan society, there were others: How forgive the génocidaires? And, perversely, how trust Tutsis who didn’t flee Rwanda yet survived? Crucial questions, for the forces aligned with the genocide were afterward defeated by a rebel army formed of Tutsi refugees escaped from past persecutions. The Tutsi leader was General Paul Kagame. He comes across as a most impressive figure, so much so that Gourevitch might be mistaken for the General’s press secretary. And since the horrors recorded here tend to invest readers in the author’s judgments, there is a natural desire to believe in Kagame’s greatness, perhaps too uncritically.

The book concludes with what possibly was as near to a symbol for hope as Gourevitch could discover in the circumstances, a hope, derived grotesquely, that it’s possible to reject insularity and identify as one with others who differ somehow. The scene’s heartbreaking character, considered with all the author has reported, can’t but make that hope seem the most perishable of aspirations. ( )
1 vote dypaloh | Aug 26, 2019 |
I didn't finish this history of the conflict between the Hutus & Tutsis in Rwanda because it was, frankly, boring. However, I did listen to it for about 4 hours and set it down with a couple of important points to consider.

Just as the Dutch did in South Africa and Hitler did in Germany, power was gathered by creating hatred between two groups who had peacefully coexisted for a very long time. I felt a shiver run up my spine when I saw the parallel to what is happening in my own country, the United States, as Trump and his Conservative Coalition create and exacerbate divisions between Democrats and Republicans. Seriously, it is terrifying!

The second idea, much less frightening, yet certainly creating food for thought, is that history is told by folks who have adopted a perspective of particular groups, at the expense of other groups. I will have to chew on this for a while. ( )
  hemlokgang | Mar 13, 2019 |
This is not an easy book to review. Rwanda and the world's response to it is a mess. The genocide in Rwanda is an important subject, not only for the fact that it happened, but also because it is still denied to have happened by those that caused it, and that the international community did so little to prevent it, to punish those that caused it, and to prevent it from reoccurring. My complaint about the book is the authors approach to telling the story. In the beginning Gourevitch seems to be telling how he learned about the genocide, rather than reporting the events. Ultimately, he gets the facts out, but without obvious clarity. He then shifts to a more traditional reporting stance as the deaths pile up...literally. The reader at that point may assume that the main event is over, but then Gourevitch shifts to reporting on what folks say (or don't say) about what happened. Occasionally, he shifts to commentary mode, but then shifts back to "roving reporter". We eventually learn that, like an earthquake, this genocide also has its significant "aftershocks", causing further misery. Throughout this aftershock period, Gourevitch makes a number of very insightful observations, such as, "So survival can seem a curse, for one of the dominant needs of the needy soul is to be needed." For me, the strength of the book is the author's persistence to find what really happened and why, not just the statistics or the gore. ( )
  larryerick | Apr 26, 2018 |
I read this years ago and it has always stuck with me. This book by Philip Gourevitch details the massacre in Rwanda back in 1994 and should outrage and sicken the reader by the lack of the action by the world over the nearly one million killings during a very, very short time.

There are so many people to blame for this atrocity, that according to Gourevitch's book, could have possibly been averted if only the world had expressed more courage.

From Bill Clinton's fear of a second military failure on the heels of what happened in Somalia in 1993, to the rest fo the world ignoring teletypes predicting a wide-spread horror was about begin.

It is truly a heartbreaking book, but a very important one.

( )
1 vote EricEllis | Sep 2, 2017 |
A mix of personal stories from Rwandans with historical background about the genocide and it's aftermath, this is such a powerful book for anybody who only knows the basic details and wants to learn more. This is a a book to get you angry about bureaucratic inefficiencies and politics being valued over lives and hypocritical ideologies that allowed such an atrocity to flourish.

It took me a while into the book before realising that Paul Rusesabagina is the same Paul in the movie Hotel Rwanda, the instigator of my awareness of the Rwandan genocide in 1994. He comes across as the everyman who rises up to the occasion and saves thousands of Rwandans from being brutally murdered. He is modest about his achievement, reckoning that anybody could have - should have - done what he did.

But, in a sense, once in the situation, once the genocide started, not everybody really could have stood up to the interahamwe like he did and not have incurred death. He had the means to keep the refugees safe, the connections to keep the murderers at bay, the ability to refuse to cooperate with the murderers without being murdered, a "luxury" that hundreds of thousands did not have.

This is not to take away the magnitude of what he did. It was indeed heroic, he saved thousands of lives as neighbours and communities, international and local, looked the other way. But to call him heroic also implies that it is something very few people can do when it's something at least more people should have strove to do, as he himself said. He is a hero because there was an absence of heroes.

Another thing that stood out for me in the book is the rebuilding of the country and reconciliation of its citizens that had to happen after the genocide.

But how. No one has escaped unscathed, psychologically, physically, everybody has lost someone, survivors and killers have to continue living together in the same community, exiles who have never set foot in Rwanda returns and adds another layer of callousness and suspicion to the mix. I can't even begin to imagine the enormity of the task that Kagame had taken on.

There is no previous model for a rebuilding of this type. The UN, having already failed to enforce the Genocide Convention introduced after WII to prevent such monstrosities, is now lumping Rwanda as a subsection of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Balkan war. Not to forget that the refugee camps were actually helping mostly war criminals in their flight from Rwanda after the genocide they committed.

And where is Belgium, whose colonialist "success" depended on encouraging ethnic discrimination, and where is France, supplying arms and support to the killers, and where is America, having strenuously avoided using the word genocide in press conferences so as to avoid being obligated to help and in the end still delayed the help being sent by rent it to the UN instead. Thousands of lives lost while they tried to negotiate a five million dollar reduction.

It's all good and well to say reading books like this is to be aware and prevent it from ever happening again, but considering how many more genocides there were after the Holocaust, where nations committed to paying lip service statement of Never Again, it seems more like another historical record to be filed away. I can only hope beyond hope this won't be so. ( )
  kitzyl | Jun 30, 2017 |
The title of this book is a sentence from a letter written by a group of Tutsi pastors writing on behalf of themselves and their congregants from the place they've taken refuge to their spiritual superiors. Despite their pleas, help is not forthcoming and most are slaughtered. Approximately 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors in 100 days during the spring of 1994. The government and Hutu power brokers had been encouraging the slaughter in the public media for months.

Philip Gourevtich , a writer for the New Yorker, compiles an extensive review of not only the genocide itself, but the history of the Tutsis and Hutus, the historical involvement of France and Belgium and their creation of a rift that didn't previously exist for their own national interests, and the lack of interest by the outside world in the African tragedy. While the personal stories and the political situation of the genocide itself are engrossing, it seems that the horror gets lost in the author's need to cover not only the crisis, but ancient Rwandan history, international response to the horror, his reaction to the policies of aid agencies, and the attitude of other African nations as they take advantage of the refugees and international aid.

I enjoyed this book but think it would have had more of an impact had it been more tightly edited. I was glad I had previously watched the movie "Hotel Rwanda" which gave a more emotional picture of the human betrayal and bravery of the Rwandans, and heartbreak of the international military force forbidden to intervene in the slaughter. ( )
  LeslieHurd | Jan 11, 2017 |
Great book -sad that it was written but important that it was. Yet more proof that we are not all equal. Betrayal of a small country in Africa by the West and more importantly by the impotence of the United Nations (both intentional and. non-intentional.
A must read -Ask yourself, "do we have a world force that is capable of helping any people in the midst of a revolution?" Unfortunately the answer appears to be no, only groups and governments looking to gain an advantage on the world stage. ( )
  busterrll | Jun 25, 2016 |
Many people don't want to read about the 'upsetting' events of Rwanda, but perhaps if more people read about these events they would be less likely to happen, or be ignored when the do happen. The issues surrounding the genocide are explained well and leave the reader feeling very disappointed in the UN and the world community as a whole of ignoring the events at the time ( )
1 vote NikNak1 | Mar 17, 2016 |
This book is an account of the genocide that occurred in Rwanda in 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutus in the period of 3 months. They were killed, mostly with machetes, in the most horrific ways imaginable, while the rest of the world turned their eyes away.
Philip Gourevitch explains just how the genocide came to pass, and what the aftermath was in the following four years.
Along with the facts, this book raises so many questions – How can a person hack to death someone in their own family? How does one “survive” this kind of event? Why didn’t somebody from outside Rwanda (i.e. a European nation or the United States) step in to help put down the killers? How could the Tutsis live side-by-side with the Hutus after the refugees returned?
Gourevitch interviewed survivors, killers, government officials, business people, and professional soldiers among others. He writes with amazing clarity and detail regarding the timeline of events. His access to the people he interviewed was incredible. He must have been nearly fearless in his attempts to gain the truth.
This book is an important chronicle of a horrendous event. Just like the Holocaust, this is an event which shouldn’t be forgotten.
~Stephanie ( )
1 vote BooksOn23rd | Nov 25, 2015 |
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