As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda [Paperback]

Catherine Claire Larson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2009

Inspired by the award-winning film of the same name. If you were told that a murderer was to be released into your neighborhood, how would you feel? But what if it weren't only one, but thousands? Could there be a common roadmap to reconciliation? Could there be a shared future after unthinkable evil? If forgiveness is possible after the slaughter of nearly a million in a hundred days in Rwanda, then today, more than ever, we owe it to humanity to explore how one country is addressing perceptual, social-psychological, and spiritual dimensions to achieve a more lasting peace. If forgiveness is possible after genocide, then perhaps there is hope for the comparably smaller rifts that plague our relationships, our communities, and our nation. Based on personal interviews and thorough research, As We Forgive returns to the boundary lines of genocide's wounds and traces the route of reconciliation in the lives of Rwandans---victims, widows, orphans, and perpetrators---whose past and future intersect. We find in these stories how suffering, memory, and identity set up roadblocks to forgiveness, while mediation, truth-telling, restitution, and interdependence create bridges to healing. As We Forgive explores the pain, the mystery, and the hope through seven compelling stories of those who have made this journey toward reconciliation. The result is a narrative that breathes with humanity and is as haunting as it is hopeful.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rwanda—bloodied, scarred and nearly destroyed by the 1994 brutality of the Hutu genocide of Tutsis—is now called an uncharted case study in forgiveness by author Larson, who was inspired by the award-winning film As We Forgive. Individual stories form prototypes: there is Rosaria, left for dead in a pile of bodies, who forgives her sisters killer. And Chantal, whose family is brutally murdered yet who forgives her neighbor for the crimes. Devota, mutilated and left for dead, survives, forgives and eventually adopts several orphans. Each story is horrible and deeply personal as Larson mines the truths of forgiveness deep in each ones tale. Helpful interludes offer readers hands-on ways to facilitate forgiveness and take the next step to reconciliation in their own lives. This isnt an easy book to read or digest, yet its message is mandatory: Forgiveness can push out the borders of what we believe is possible. Reconciliation can offer us a glimpse of the transfigured world to come. (Feb.)
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Review

In compelling stories and thoughtful reflections, Catherine Claire Larson gives us glimpses of the powerful transformation taking place in Rwanda today. Reconciliation can indeed follow unspeakable evil; forgiveness is the key. -- Daniel W. Van Ness, Executive Director, Centre for Justice and Reconciliation

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Zondervan (January 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0310287308
• ISBN-13: 978-0310287308
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > History > Africa > Rwanda
  • #18 in Books > History > Africa > Central Africa

More About the Author

Catherine Claire Larson is a senior writer and editor of Prison Fellowship and BreakPoint. With a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in theological studies, Larson hopes to give voice to Rwandans who are involved in one of the most closely watched experiments in forgiveness in our world today.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timothy McConnell (CommonGroundsOnline) reviews As We Forgive, February 3, 2009

By 

Timothy McConnell (Charlottesville, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda (Paperback)

[...]

Inspired by and building upon the two documentaries As We Forgive (Laura Waters Hinson) and We Are All Rwandans (Debs Gardner-Patterson), Catherine Claire Larson explores the dark hours of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 in even greater depth and power by retelling not only the harrowing stories of survival, but the miraculous accounts of forgiveness. The stories she recounts are heart-wrenching, stomach-turning experiences of the absolute worst of human sinfulness matched only by the awe-inspiring moments of forgiveness made possible through the grace of God in Christ.

The effect of this book is to put one's own life in new perspective. When the stories of terror are met with the miracles of forgiveness, one's own experiences of grief, trial and guilt pale in comparison. This is not only a book for those interested in the horror of the Rwandan genocide and afterward; this is a book for anyone who has ever been wronged or has ever wronged another.

Larson leads the reader through seven different accounts of personal experiences. It is difficult to find words to sum these experiences up, except to say that the reader is asked to share with the victims in the horrors of rape, dismemberment, burnings and abandonments. Relatives are killed in the sight of loved ones, fathers in the plain view of their children. Even clergy and officials participate in mass killings of Tutsi people, who they have categorized as "cockroaches." The absolute worst in human nature is on display here. With each story of horror and survival, an accompanying miracle emerges: forgiveness.

What struck me in reading was the fundamental truth that forgiveness is unnatural; forgiveness cannot naturally follow what these victims endured. It is not natural for a girl who has been mauled, raped, and left for dead to grow to offer forgiveness to her terrorizers. It is not natural for a boy who watched his father and family killed by neighbors he knew to turn to them with grace and favor. Forgiveness is an intervention. It is some sort of divine intervention that must enter from another plane of existence. In these stories, it is brought in by Christ himself, who has borne the stripes, the suffering and the death, the worst of all that human sinfulness can bring to bear, and has looked with compassion on us and called for forgiveness from the cross. And forgiveness heals the heart.

Larson provides the reader with interludes between accounts to discuss the meaning of forgiveness. These interludes engage the reader immediately with the challenge to practice forgiveness in his or her own life. They are rich in theological and psychological resource, but their real power is in their juxtaposition to the astounding accounts of Rwandan Christian faith. The reader is transformed by the application of these testimonies in his or her own life. It's not just about Rwanda, its about being a Christian and being forgiven by God "as we forgive those who sin against us."

The principles of the Christian life can be discussed in the abstract, but eventually they must be put into play in the great drama of human history. The Spring of 1994 in Rwanda is such a moment. The release of genocide participants back into their communities over the last few years has produced such a moment. Catherine Claire Larson has captured these moments for you and me. As I read I could see the faces of these Rwandan Christians. You will know them just as well when you read; and you will be moved by their witness to Christ, and the power of His forgiveness.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heart-breaking stories of suffering, moving stories of radical forgiveness, February 3, 2009

By 

G. Lucke - See all my reviews
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This review is from: As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda (Paperback)

The prospect of reading Catherine Claire Larson's As We Forgive both repelled me and attracted me. I've got little stomach for stories of humans torturing, maiming and killing others; I want to look away. Yet the title told me that something uncommon had happened-- that victims had forgiven their brutalizers.

Larson does tell the stories of suffering in detail. Her friendship with victims and knowledge of their stories, narrated in vivid prose, is heart-breaking. Rwandans did vicious, awful things to one another. Larson does not look away.

What was so surprising, after learning of the brutality in detail, is how Larson's subjects slowly came to forgive their enemies. It's hard to believe. I think of the slights and shuns and petty avengement in my docile suburban world, and how friends will say, "I'm not speaking to him," and it all seems so silly when those who were repeatedly tormented and had their loved ones slain can forgive ultimate horror.

Larson provoked me to think about my relationships at a deeper level, but also how collectives and institutions might also contemplate forgiveness of wrongs done to them.

Through it all Larson writes with verve and wisdom that makes for enlivened reading, and she points to a depth and richness of HOPE that I've rarely experienced. This is a great book.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and heartbreaking, February 25, 2009

By 

K. Steakley "Avid reader" (Virginia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda (Paperback)

Catherine has taken a brave journey that few of us would wish to take, but that all of us will be the better for joining her on--a journey into the evil and terror of genocide...and back out again, on the other side, into the grace and unfathomable hope of forgiveness. Writing beautifully with the heart of a storyteller, Catherine introduces us to genocide survivors and perpetrators, ordinary men and women, boys and girls whose lives were never the same after the awful events that took place during 100 days in 1994. The stories are heartbreakingly, unutterably sad. How could neighbors wield machetes against their neighbors, their friends, children? And yet, as Catherine shows us, the madness that consumed the nation of Rwanda is the same madness that invades our own hearts when we hold a grudge, turn a back on a friend, curse that driver in front of us. The small petty grievances that we allow to pile up day after day have the same root as the unspeakable, unthinkable horror of a national genocide.

This book is not easy to read, but it is necessary to read. We all need to know that we are forgiven and that we are capable of forgiving even the most heinous and outrageous of offenses. The awful history of Rwanda can teach us all the profound truth of our own guilt and the almost unbearable grace of forgiveness.