Cockroaches
Rwanda

Cockroaches

by Scholastique Mukasonga

Identity & Belonging Memoir 2016

Summary

In this moving autobiographical memoir, Scholastique Mukasonga recounts her childhood as a Tutsi girl in Rwanda, where ethnic persecution gradually transforms everyday life into a struggle for survival. After her family is forcibly displaced to the impoverished Bugesera region, she grows up surrounded by fear, humiliation, and uncertainty, yet also by the warmth of family life and the strength of her community. Eventually forced to flee to neighbouring Burundi, Mukasonga leaves behind the people and places that shaped her childhood. In 1994, while living in France, she learns that thirty-seven members of her family have been murdered during the Rwandan genocide. The title refers to inyenzi, a dehumanising slur used against Tutsis, reducing human beings to creatures considered fit for extermination. Through precise, restrained prose, Mukasonga transforms her memories into an act of remembrance, restoring individuality to those whom violence sought to erase. Cockroaches is both a personal testimony of survival and a powerful tribute to the enduring bonds of family, memory, and belonging.

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About the author
Scholastique Mukasonga
Scholastique Mukasonga

Scholastique Mukasonga (born in 1956) is a Rwandan novelist and memoirist who lives in France. Born in southern Rwanda, she experienced ethnic persecution from childhood. In 1960, her Tutsi family was forcibly displaced to the Bugesera region, and she later fled to Burundi before settling in France in 1992. Two years later, the Rwandan genocide claimed the lives of 37 members of her family, including her mother. Writing became a way to preserve their memories and recover the cultural world that violence had threatened to destroy. Her first book, Inyenzi ou les Cafards (2006), is a memoir of her childhood and the persecution of the Tutsi. Her acclaimed novel Our Lady of the Nile won France’s prestigious Prix Renaudot in 2012. Her other notable works include The Barefoot Woman and Kibogo. Through fiction, memoir, and folklore, Mukasonga explores memory, displacement, cultural identity, and resilience.

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Details
Published
2016
Author
Scholastique Mukasonga