Remember the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry gets in trouble with his parents because he and his girlfriend were spotted making out during a screening of Schindler's List? The inference being that the subject matter of the movie is too important to not be in reverent awe of the film itself? I feel like the chastened Jerry while I consider reviewing Running the Rift: The subject of the Rwandan Genocide feels too important for me to dismiss this book out of hand, but I didn't really love it. I'll admit I also didn't love Sarah's Key and The Cellist of Sarajevo: I didn't think any of these books was particularly well written but will concede that they are useful introductions to horrific acts -- whether the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup, the Siege of Sarajevo or the Rwandan Genocide -- that more people should be aware of. To the extent that any book provokes empathy and a desire for further research into the Rwandan Genocide, and Running the Rift did accomplish both of these with me, I believe that it does have inherent value beyond its literary attributes.
I see a lot of readers are dismissing Running the Rift as a YA novel posing as literature, but that's a curious charge to me; I didn't find this book juvenile, just not great. It won the 2010 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction "awarded biennially to the author of a previously unpublished novel of high literary caliber that promotes fiction that addresses issues of social justice and the impact of culture and politics on human relationships". A jury decided that this is a work of "high literary caliber", so I suppose that validates the opinions of those who would give Running the Rift five star ratings, but I found this book to be flawed.
There were many clunky lines, as unsophisticated as something I may have been proud to have written in high school: "Jean Patrick gradually shook off his morning companion named Misery" or "…uneasiness crept from the mist to sit beside him in his rickety chair". And many times Jean Patrick would make a decision and then change his mind in the next paragraph -- this didn't read to me like the character's hopeless indecision, it was just annoying:
He had to flee…The thought sent a chill through his body, but from this day forward, the only way left to help those he loved was to save himself…He would leave in the morning…Better to run like a dog than die like a dog. But what if Bea was pregnant? He could not leave her, unmarried, carrying his child. He would give it another day. Maybe two or three.
Plot points I didn't like: There was no point in getting Jean Patrick a Hutu identity card if he is nearly immediately told not to use it and it never came in handy in the end. There was no resolution with the scar-faced Albert who torments Jean Patrick throughout the book and promises to kill him eventually. I did not believe that Jean Patrick would flee to save himself when Bea ran back into her parents' house. I did not believe that Coach would kill himself. I did not believe that Bea would apologise for allowing herself to be raped (especially after emphasising that she was from a modern family, not one burdened with misogynistic cultural views). And I did NOT believe or want the happy ending of the lovers finding each other against all odds.
But mostly, I didn't like the completely one-sided take on this horrific conflict. Like I said, Running the Rift prompted me to research what happened in Rwanda, and it seems very simplistic to paint the Hutus as a people who were riled up, to the point of mass murder, just by radical groups and media. In no way am I denying the genocide or saying they had legitimate reasons for trying to wipe out the Tutsis, but the history of Rwanda (the long subjugation of the majority Hutus by the Tutsi monarchy, the mishandling of everything by the departing Belgians, the 1972 Genocide of the Hutus, the fear that the Tutsis were set to rise again through their guerilla RFP and its prominence in neighbouring Burundi, etc.) meant that the Hutus were poised for radicalisation. In this book, Naomi Benaron paints every Tutsi as a peace-loving victim and most Hutus as vicious racists. In one particularly jarring example, Valerie, the young woman who had just days before carried a WE ARE ALL ONE PEOPLE banner at a rally protesting the persecution of the Tutsis, upon hearing of the death of Daniel, the young Hutu man she had been flirting with, says in a zombielike mantra, "He was icyitso (traitor). He deserved to die. As do you." I think it would have been more horrifying, and more honest, if there had been some insight into how formerly good Hutu neighbours could pick up a club or machete and start indiscriminately massacring their former Tutsi friends. As a last complaint, this book was missing heart somehow. Considering the nightmarish source material, I was never brought to the brink of tears, and when I am invested in characters, that's not particularly hard to do.
There were things that I did like about Running the Rift. I appreciated the use of words in the local dialect and the way that they were introduced and defined: It was one of those strange occurrences, the policeman said, that revealed Ikiganza cy'Imana, the Hand of God. This felt appropriate and much more reader friendly than footnotes or a glossary tucked in the back pages. In the same vein, I liked the descriptions of the everyday routines and customs of average people and what they eat and wear. I think that Benaron did a good job of describing the scenery of Rwanda, from the lakes to the hills to the sucking mud underfoot in the rainy season. And for the most part, I did enjoy the characters but wish that they showed more growth. I like the characters of Jonathan and Susanne in particular as representatives of the oblivious West -- especially when Susanne bemoans the poaching of Dian Fossey's mountain gorillas, completely unaware of how offensive this is to Bea who is concerned with the killing of actual people.
This notion of the oblivious West is perhaps the most fascinating to me as we consider the civil war in Syria right now and whether this falls under the moral imperative of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine that was adopted by the UN in the wake of the Rwandan Genocide. It seems everywhere "we" intrude there are unintended consequences (i.e., the CIA training Bin Laden to get the USSR out of Afghanistan). Do we oust Assad from Syria now and let the Al-Qaeda tied rebels take over the government? How many civilians must be murdered or displaced before intervention is unavoidable? Because Running the Rift has prompted me to look further into these issues, and into the Rwandan Genocide itself, I can only conclude that it likely deserved its PEN/Bellwether Prize: it certainly shines a light on Social Justice, and that is always a worthwhile endeavor.
