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This chapter explores Nocky Djedanoum’s collection of poetry, Venuste Kayimahe’s eyewitness testimony, and Jean-Marie Rurangwa’s essay. (Kayimahe and Rurangwa are the only two Rwandans among the authors.) These texts are often excluded from in-depth analyses; however, they provide useful insights due to the positioning of the two Rwandan authors in comparison to the non-Rwandan writers. These three texts are diverse in terms of genre and style, but there are themes that they have in common, such as their reflection on diasporic communities and the shared African experience of exile. Reading them together allows us to look at these issues and to consider the different contributions made possible by these varying witnessing positions.

This chapter investigates two texts, namely Veronique Tadjo’s L’ombre d’Imana: voyages jusqu’au bout du Rwanda and Koulsy Lamko’s La phalene des collines. Both are hybrid, polyphonic texts in which the authors engage with communitarian value systems, approaches to storytelling and attitudes to trauma that are particular to African contexts. I consider the authors’ creative reappropriation of the oral narrative genre and how this speaks to the sociopolitical context of the texts. I discuss how elements such as the use of oral forms, the acknowledgment of traditional customs and burial rites, the presence of the invisible world, shared listening and interaction—all important elements in traditional Rwandan (and ‘African’) culture—are embedded in these narratives.

In this final chapter, I illustrate the power of the collaborative nature of the project by discussing some of the recurring elements as they appear in the different texts. I consider the collective depiction of the representation of the erosion of Rwandan traditional belief systems and the creative reinsertion/subversion of cultural frames of reference and storytelling devices, with a focus on the interconnectedness with nature and the figure of the sage.

This chapter describes the aims and challenges of the Rwanda: ecrire par devoir de memoire project and introduces its authors: Veronique Tadjo, Boubacar Boris Diop, Koulsy Lamko, Abdourahman Waberi, Tierno Monenembo, Monique Ilboudo, Nocky Djedanoum, Venuste Kayimahe, and Jean-Marie Vianney Rurangwa. It speaks to the African and Afropolitan frameworks and lenses that constitute a strong presence in the texts. Instead of using Western and Eurocentric tropes, this volume looks at an African conflict situated in a collectivist society and written about by writers from African origin. This approach enables a more situated study, in which it becomes possible to draw out the local notions of ubuntu, oral testimonies, mourning traditions, healing and storytelling strategies, and the presence of the ‘invisible’.

This chapter deals with a different type of power, also linked to community, but one which destroys and divides rather than creates harmony: the power of the word, of propaganda, disinformation, indoctrination, and rationalization. I discuss the polarization of identities and the political abuse and misrepresentation of foundation and identity myths and migration theories, as well as the influence of a heritage of compulsory communal tasks and a strong culture of conformism and blind submission to authority. This approach enables me to consider the literary representation of some of the dynamics that led to mass participation in the genocide. These societal influences are what inform my reading of Abdourahman Waberi’s Moisson de crânes: textes pour le Rwanda and Boubacar Boris Diop’s Murambi: le livre des ossements.

Rwanda today is a society inhabited by orphans, widows, prisoners, perpetrators, and returnees, all living in close proximity in a country characterized by sites of violence, haunting memories, recurring nightmares, and survivor guilt. The portrayal of the aftermath of genocide is the perspective that I adopt for this chapter, in which I analyze the novels by Monique Ilboudo (Murekatete) and Tierno Monenembo (L’aine des orphelins, translated into English as The Oldest Orphan). Both authors create protagonists who embody some of these post-genocide realities and are marked by traces of traumatic memory. In Ilboudo’s text, rape, limbo, and survivor guilt are pivotal concerns, and Monenembo’s text focuses on the plight of the orphans left behind by the genocide.

This chapter introduces the project Rwanda: ecrire par devoir de memoire (Rwanda: Writing by Duty of Memory) and the genesis and aims of the monograph which deals with literary representations of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It underlines the plural, participatory nature of the project and the value of such a mode of writing for the representation of collective trauma.

Various writers and survivors have offered literary responses to the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. In 1998, a group of African intellectuals, mostly non-Rwandans, of whom two were female authors, participated in a collective writing project, Rwanda: ecrire par devoir de memoire, tasked to tell the story of the genocide. Genocide survivor, sociologist and psychotherapist, Esther Mujawayo, has since narrated her own story. Although critics have explored the portrayal of trauma in literature in other texts and contexts, a comparative study between these three texts of female authors; one survivor and two intellectuals, focusing on the experience of female survivors and in particular that of being raped has not yet been conducted. This article examines how trauma is made visible to the reader by exploring the characteristics of the ‘death experience’ and their mediated form, as offered by the three authors. This comparative study furthermore highlights the elements in the lives of survivors which influence their ability to move from a position of mere survival to that of embracing life after the genocide. Keywords: devoir de memoire, Esther Mujawayo, female survivor, Monique Ilboudo, rape, representation of trauma, Rwandan genocide, testimony, Veronique Tadjo.