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Left to Tell by Immaculée Ilibagiza Essay example

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In her book, Immaculée Ilibagiza shares the power of faith in God through her moving experience of the Rwandan genocide. God saved her life for a reason. “He left me to tell my story to others and show as many people as possible the leading power of his Love and Forgiveness” (208-09). Her book proves that “with God all things are possible”. Her objective is not to give a historical account of Rwanda and/or of the genocide. She gives her own story. She attests that through God’s help, forgiveness is possible – even to those who killed her parents. Her book is meant to help people to let go of the chains of hatred and anger, and be able to truly live in God who is love. Left to Tell is a breathtaking book that proves the fact that “the love…show more content…
In fact, many of her good friends were Hutus. Her parents too were ‘blind’ to the reality of hatred around them. They believed that nothing would harm them, given that they had done good things for their neighbours. When Habyarimana’s presidential plane was shot down on 6 April 1994, all that Immaculée’s parents believed was proven false. All she experienced from her neighbours as she grew up turned out to be like “a gathering storm” which anticipated a heavy “rain” to befall Rwanda – the genocide. This seems to the reason why she entitled the first section of her book, “A Gathering Storm.”

In the second part, Immaculée narrates her horrifying experience of the genocide. God became her father, mother, brother, her everything, in a tiny bathroom where she hid from the killers for months. When the genocide began, Immaculée’s father asked her to go to hide at the house of Pastor Mulinzi – a family friend – with her brother Vianney, and Augustin, Immaculée’s friend who was a Hutu but looked like a Tutsi. Mulinzi accepted them into his house, but when things became tough, he chased Vianney and Augustin away and kept Immaculée with five other women. Mulinzi hid them in a tiny bathroom. Every corner of his house was searched many times by the killers, the Interahamwe (youth militia trained for killing), but it seemed that God blinded them, preventing them from discovering the bathroom. The six women wished
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