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Comparing Genocide Literature on the Basis of Genre: Version 1.1
It is said that history is written by the winners. However, after genocide, there are no winners; there are survivors, beneficiaries, perpetrators, and there must always be storytellers, those whose role it is to stand outside of the fire and describe the ashes. The perspective of the storyteller depends on the genre of work the author aims to produce which dictates the nature of truth that the audience then receives. By comparing Phillip Gourevitch's non-fiction book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, and Gil Courtemanche's novel, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, I intend to show how the issue of genre causes these two Western journalists to record the Rwandan genocide of 1994 in totally contrasting ways. There are numerous aspects to measure this divide by, but I have chosen to focus on the aspect of characterization to highlight the crucial differences.
Let us first compare the way Rwandan woman are characterized in Gourevitch and Courtemanche's books. I base my comparisons on Gentille and Odette, respectively, who are recognizably the leading female characters in each book. Odette, a survivor of the genocide whom Gourevitch interviews, is an educated, upper or middle class professional woman. Gourevitch places her throughout the book in surroundings like cocktail parties and country clubs. As Gourevitch describes Odette and her husband on page 71, “They were known as excellent doctors and fun people-warm, vivacious, good-humored. They had a charmingly affectionate ease with each other and one saw right away that they were in the midst of full and engaging lives.” (71) It is unfortunate that Gourevitch does not present other women characters in this level of detail, so readers do not develop a clear image of Rwandan women from this book. Tutsi or Hutu notwithstanding, Gourevitch is often guilty of spinning oversimplified, one-sided characterizations like these not just for the Rwandan women but for many of the survivors we meet in the book.
On the other hand, we have Courtemanche who relishes in lurid details and moral shortcomings. His leading lady Gentille is a Hutu with a Tutsi appearance. She has the role of Courtemanche's lover in his novel and we are made to fear for her life as we identify with her character through details and characterization provided by Courtemanche. Gentille is also of middle class, but she is a bartender, not a doctor like Odette. Her setting is usually the hotel where she works, and she is often shown being harassed by paratroopers and government men. Despite their relationship, Courtemanch does not avoid uncomfortable truths about Gentille. For example, he explicitly voices, “She wanted a White, a White like any other. A promise of wealth, maybe a visa for somewhere else; and if the blessed Holy Virgin answered her prayer, marriage with a White and a house in a cold country, a clean one.” (37) This statement instantly alerts the reader to Gentille’s less than romantic motives for entering into this affair, which instantly adds depth to her character.
There are many other characters of interesting moral shades, like Elise, the white aid worker who assists with suicides, and Agathe, the hotel’s most prominent prostitute. Gentille and these characters are very successful at portraying a more complete picture of Rwanda; that is, the reality for women in the years leading up to the genocide, not just after. Their choices are complicated and nuanced, just as they often are in real life. Through these characters, Courtemanche presents irrefutable and honest humanity.
I think it suffice to say that Gourevitch, in this journalistic role, has a responsibility to portray only the aspects of Odette that correspond to her role in the genocide. All remarks about her are positive and attempt to portray her as an upstanding, relatable character. However, she is too pristine to be relatable.
With Odette, Courtemanche is able to present her as a real, flawed, three-dimensional human being. Through the context of their relationship, the audience gains perspective on her views of white men, the complexities of sexuality in an AIDS-ravaged society and the dangers for women specifically in a genocide. There are other characters, like
Another genre-inspired bias in the authors' techniques lies in their handling of Rwanda as a character. In Gourevitch's reporting, he pens gorgeous imagery of Rwanda:.
Throughout its center, a winding succession of steep, tightly terraced slopes radiates out from small roadside settlements and solitary compounds. Gashes of red clay and black loam mark fresh hoe work; eucalyptus trees flash silver against brilliant green tea plantations; banana trees are everywhere. (20)
He speaks a lot about beauty and nature. In some segments, the book reads like a Rwandan travel brochure.
In contrast, Courtemanche's book focuses on the city of Kigali. He describes the urbane areas of foreign diplomats and visiting dignitaries in contrast with the poverty all around them. Observing the paradoxical atmosphere of the hotel where he spends his time, Courtemanche writes:
All around the pool and hotel in lascivious disorder lies the part of the city that matters, that makes the decisions, that steals, kills, and lives very nicely, thank you. […] Small red houses-just far enough away from the swimming pool not to offend the nostrils of the important-filled with shouting, happy children, with men and women dying of AIDS and malaria, thousands of small households that know nothing of the pool around which others plan their lives and, more importantly, their predictable deaths. (1)
This landscape is instantly more politically charged. The author's tone is explicitly non-neutral, which is acceptable because this is a novel.
From the very first page, Courtemanche’s aggressively subjective point of view is seen. His freedom from political correctness creates a much more descriptive and thoughtful analysis of the landscape. Also, by exoticizing the Rwandan landscape, Gourevitch actually creates a mental distance between Western readers and the events of the genocide by capitalizing on the Otherness of the place. We can't forget this is Africa because we are constantly being reminded. In Courtemanche's book, the setting becomes just another crowded, crooked urban environment. That distance, that separation between Us and Them, disappears a little.
Finally, the most important distinction between Gourevitch's non-fiction and Courtemanche's novel is in the depictions of Hutu characters. For a journalist working to write a non-fiction piece, Gourevitch makes his own judgements on the events of 1994 painfully obvious with his flat and one-sided depictions of the Hutus as unfeeling brutes. He cannot censor his own compassion for the victims enough to allow moderate Hutu voices to be depicted fairly. We don't even get moderate Hutu voices. We get a corrupt priest and thousands of machetes. We get millions of victimized Tutsis.
Conversely, in Courtemanche's novel, there are a variety of complex Hutu and Tutsi voices that defy our expectations. The following conversation between the narrator and Raphael exemplifies that.
‘You’ve got nothing in common with that bunch.’
‘On the contrary. We’re all Rwandans, all prisoners of the same twisted history that has made us paranoid and schizophrenic at the same time. And like them I was born filled with hate and prejudice. D’you understand? What I’m saying is, if the Tutsis controlled the army here the way they do in Burundi, we’d kill them all, those Hutus. And I’d be right up there. Then I’d go and confess. Buy me a beer. I’m broke.' (109)
Because of their respective fiction or non-fiction genres, Courtemanche is allowed to create these words, while Gourevitch has to wait for someone to say it. However, this is not mere poetic license--Gourevitch consistently avoids the messier aspects of the RCourtemanche does not have to offer up responsibility for these ideas the way a journalist must in writing non-fiction. Therein lies a major crux of the differentiation between fiction and literary journalism: in fiction, the author is not always the narrator. In literary journalism, he is, even if first-person tales by other speakers are often used. The author is still essentially held accountable for the views expressed in the work, and he is assumed to be in agreement with them unless he follows a statement like the one above with some sort of disclaimer. Not so for a fiction writer.
In conclusion, these two very different depictions of the Rwandan genocide have unique qualities to offer readers. In a sense, they are good supplements for each other because each account fails to document some aspect of the situation where the other has suceeded. For instance, Gourevitch's book gives Western readers a valuable dose of political history and documentation of foreign response to the crisis which couldn’t possibly fit within Courtemanche's storyline. Also, his book provides a forum for genocide survivor's voices to be heard, in their own words, through a best-selling book. Yet, there is also a savage truth also in the novel form. As Courtemanche says in the Preface, “If I have taken the liberty of inventing a little, I have done so the better to convey the human quality of the murdered men and women.” In his time living in Rwanda before the genocide, Courtemanche had the ability to know their ‘human quality’ first as people and only later as ‘survivors.’
Courtemanche offers readers a very thoughtful representation of the issue of AIDS in Rwanda, as well as an honest acknowledgement of women's sexuality. These are matters perhaps too messy for Gourevitch to go into while he handles issues which are too political and detailed to work in Courtemanche's novel. These differences highlight the very nature of genre. We see that it is possible for "objective" truth, as in literary journalism, to fall short on addressing un-politically correct issues, and we can also see why we don't read novels to learn history. But maybe we should.
Works Cited
Courtemanche, Gil. A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2003.
Gourevitch, Phillip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
It is said that history is written by the winners. However, after genocide, there are no winners; there are survivors, beneficiaries, perpetrators, and there must always be storytellers, those whose role it is to stand outside of the fire and describe the ashes. The perspective of the storyteller depends on the genre of work the author aims to produce which dictates the nature of truth that the audience then receives. By comparing Phillip Gourevitch's non-fiction book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, and Gil Courtemanche's novel, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, I intend to show how the issue of genre causes these two Western journalists to record the Rwandan genocide of 1994 in totally contrasting ways. There are numerous aspects to measure this divide by, but I have chosen to focus on the aspect of characterization to highlight the crucial differences.
Let us first compare the way Rwandan woman are characterized in Gourevitch and Courtemanche's books. I base my comparisons on Gentille and Odette, respectively, who are recognizably the leading female characters in each book. Odette, a survivor of the genocide whom Gourevitch interviews, is an educated, upper or middle class professional woman. Gourevitch places her throughout the book in surroundings like cocktail parties and country clubs. As Gourevitch describes Odette and her husband on page 71, “They were known as excellent doctors and fun people-warm, vivacious, good-humored. They had a charmingly affectionate ease with each other and one saw right away that they were in the midst of full and engaging lives.” (71) It is unfortunate that Gourevitch does not present other women characters in this level of detail, so readers do not develop a clear image of Rwandan women from this book. Tutsi or Hutu notwithstanding, Gourevitch is often guilty of spinning oversimplified, one-sided characterizations like these not just for the Rwandan women but for many of the survivors we meet in the book.
On the other hand, we have Courtemanche who relishes in lurid details and moral shortcomings. His leading lady Gentille is a Hutu with a Tutsi appearance. She has the role of Courtemanche's lover in his novel and we are made to fear for her life as we identify with her character through details and characterization provided by Courtemanche. Gentille is also of middle class, but she is a bartender, not a doctor like Odette. Her setting is usually the hotel where she works, and she is often shown being harassed by paratroopers and government men. Despite their relationship, Courtemanch does not avoid uncomfortable truths about Gentille. For example, he explicitly voices, “She wanted a White, a White like any other. A promise of wealth, maybe a visa for somewhere else; and if the blessed Holy Virgin answered her prayer, marriage with a White and a house in a cold country, a clean one.” (37) This statement instantly alerts the reader to Gentille’s less than romantic motives for entering into this affair, which instantly adds depth to her character.
There are many other characters of interesting moral shades, like Elise, the white aid worker who assists with suicides, and Agathe, the hotel’s most prominent prostitute. Gentille and these characters are very successful at portraying a more complete picture of Rwanda; that is, the reality for women in the years leading up to the genocide, not just after. Their choices are complicated and nuanced, just as they often are in real life. Through these characters, Courtemanche presents irrefutable and honest humanity.
I think it suffice to say that Gourevitch, in this journalistic role, has a responsibility to portray only the aspects of Odette that correspond to her role in the genocide. All remarks about her are positive and attempt to portray her as an upstanding, relatable character. However, she is too pristine to be relatable.
With Odette, Courtemanche is able to present her as a real, flawed, three-dimensional human being. Through the context of their relationship, the audience gains perspective on her views of white men, the complexities of sexuality in an AIDS-ravaged society and the dangers for women specifically in a genocide. There are other characters, like
Another genre-inspired bias in the authors' techniques lies in their handling of Rwanda as a character. In Gourevitch's reporting, he pens gorgeous imagery of Rwanda:.
Throughout its center, a winding succession of steep, tightly terraced slopes radiates out from small roadside settlements and solitary compounds. Gashes of red clay and black loam mark fresh hoe work; eucalyptus trees flash silver against brilliant green tea plantations; banana trees are everywhere. (20)
He speaks a lot about beauty and nature. In some segments, the book reads like a Rwandan travel brochure.
In contrast, Courtemanche's book focuses on the city of Kigali. He describes the urbane areas of foreign diplomats and visiting dignitaries in contrast with the poverty all around them. Observing the paradoxical atmosphere of the hotel where he spends his time, Courtemanche writes:
All around the pool and hotel in lascivious disorder lies the part of the city that matters, that makes the decisions, that steals, kills, and lives very nicely, thank you. […] Small red houses-just far enough away from the swimming pool not to offend the nostrils of the important-filled with shouting, happy children, with men and women dying of AIDS and malaria, thousands of small households that know nothing of the pool around which others plan their lives and, more importantly, their predictable deaths. (1)
This landscape is instantly more politically charged. The author's tone is explicitly non-neutral, which is acceptable because this is a novel.
From the very first page, Courtemanche’s aggressively subjective point of view is seen. His freedom from political correctness creates a much more descriptive and thoughtful analysis of the landscape. Also, by exoticizing the Rwandan landscape, Gourevitch actually creates a mental distance between Western readers and the events of the genocide by capitalizing on the Otherness of the place. We can't forget this is Africa because we are constantly being reminded. In Courtemanche's book, the setting becomes just another crowded, crooked urban environment. That distance, that separation between Us and Them, disappears a little.
Finally, the most important distinction between Gourevitch's non-fiction and Courtemanche's novel is in the depictions of Hutu characters. For a journalist working to write a non-fiction piece, Gourevitch makes his own judgements on the events of 1994 painfully obvious with his flat and one-sided depictions of the Hutus as unfeeling brutes. He cannot censor his own compassion for the victims enough to allow moderate Hutu voices to be depicted fairly. We don't even get moderate Hutu voices. We get a corrupt priest and thousands of machetes. We get millions of victimized Tutsis.
Conversely, in Courtemanche's novel, there are a variety of complex Hutu and Tutsi voices that defy our expectations. The following conversation between the narrator and Raphael exemplifies that.
‘You’ve got nothing in common with that bunch.’
‘On the contrary. We’re all Rwandans, all prisoners of the same twisted history that has made us paranoid and schizophrenic at the same time. And like them I was born filled with hate and prejudice. D’you understand? What I’m saying is, if the Tutsis controlled the army here the way they do in Burundi, we’d kill them all, those Hutus. And I’d be right up there. Then I’d go and confess. Buy me a beer. I’m broke.' (109)
Because of their respective fiction or non-fiction genres, Courtemanche is allowed to create these words, while Gourevitch has to wait for someone to say it. However, this is not mere poetic license--Gourevitch consistently avoids the messier aspects of the RCourtemanche does not have to offer up responsibility for these ideas the way a journalist must in writing non-fiction. Therein lies a major crux of the differentiation between fiction and literary journalism: in fiction, the author is not always the narrator. In literary journalism, he is, even if first-person tales by other speakers are often used. The author is still essentially held accountable for the views expressed in the work, and he is assumed to be in agreement with them unless he follows a statement like the one above with some sort of disclaimer. Not so for a fiction writer.
In conclusion, these two very different depictions of the Rwandan genocide have unique qualities to offer readers. In a sense, they are good supplements for each other because each account fails to document some aspect of the situation where the other has suceeded. For instance, Gourevitch's book gives Western readers a valuable dose of political history and documentation of foreign response to the crisis which couldn’t possibly fit within Courtemanche's storyline. Also, his book provides a forum for genocide survivor's voices to be heard, in their own words, through a best-selling book. Yet, there is also a savage truth also in the novel form. As Courtemanche says in the Preface, “If I have taken the liberty of inventing a little, I have done so the better to convey the human quality of the murdered men and women.” In his time living in Rwanda before the genocide, Courtemanche had the ability to know their ‘human quality’ first as people and only later as ‘survivors.’
Courtemanche offers readers a very thoughtful representation of the issue of AIDS in Rwanda, as well as an honest acknowledgement of women's sexuality. These are matters perhaps too messy for Gourevitch to go into while he handles issues which are too political and detailed to work in Courtemanche's novel. These differences highlight the very nature of genre. We see that it is possible for "objective" truth, as in literary journalism, to fall short on addressing un-politically correct issues, and we can also see why we don't read novels to learn history. But maybe we should.
Works Cited
Courtemanche, Gil. A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2003.
Gourevitch, Phillip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.