Book Review: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch

With its long but searingly memorable title, I've been meaning to read this book for a long time. I wish I had read it before I went to Burundi (Rwanda's sister country), but it's valuable enough at this late date. Unfortunately it's not as deep an exploration of the problem as it could be. Gourevitch is insightful and hits the right level of description in his narrative, so the problem isn't the writing. The problem is the problem itself, and a few shades of issues with trust and blame: Gourevitch takes people at their word and events at their appearance just a little too often. He actually compares Paul Kagame to Abraham Lincoln at one point, which does not age well considering that now, twenty years later, Kagame is one of the many "President-for-Life" leaders in East Africa, and is definitely on the oppressive end of even that spectrum. Gourevitch veers too much toward demonizing Hutus and lionizing Tutsis. Considering that the fault for the events of the mid-90s clearly lies with the Hutu Power movement (and considering he was writing then), I understand why he'd do that, but again, it doesn't age well into the tangle of 2018 East African politics. I found this review by Rene Lemarchand to be shorter, more confusing, but also closer to the truth. Rwanda and Burundi are textbook cases of the singularly human tendency to cycle and amplify vengeance, and I'm frustrated with my own attitude that takes as a victory the mere fact that genocide hasn't happened on a large scale in two decades. Gourevitch touches on the human soul just a bit at the end of the book, and again, I don't blame him for not having an answer. This book is a window into the tangle of hate, power, and need, and that is service enough. But if there is an answer, it lies in costly forgiveness and in the choice to pour out your own life rather than cling to your own vision of justice. It's a mess. Who will rescue us from this world of death?