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HOW DARE THE SUN RISE by Sandra Uwiringiyimana

HOW DARE THE SUN RISE

Memoirs of a War Child

by Sandra Uwiringiyimana with Abigail Pesta

Pub Date: May 16th, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247014-0
Publisher: Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins

At the age of 10, author Uwiringiyimana went through horrors no one, let alone a child, should ever have to go through.

She thought her life was over when she found herself with a gun, held by a member of a guerrilla group, pointed to her head. This, after she had just witnessed the gunning down of her mother and sister in the massacre of her tribe, the Banyamulenge. Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sandra and her family had been living in a refugee camp in Burundi when the rebels struck one night. Sandra lived to tell her tale. After picking up the pieces they could find, Sandra and her family were resettled to America via a United Nations refugee program. They had more troubles ahead when the racial division and ethnic disconnect of the States hit them head-on. “I had grown up in a war zone,” she writes on coming to understand how blackness defines her in her new home, “but life in America…was a different kind of war zone.” In this touching memoir, Uwiringiyimana, with the help of Pesta, tells her story of tragedy, terror, survival, and hope. As she carries readers on a journey of self—of discovering, losing, and finding it again—she becomes a powerful voice for many who are silenced: girls, women, and immigrants everywhere, refugees in particular.

This hard-hitting autobiography will have readers reeling as it shows one young woman’s challenging path to healing

. (Memoir. 13-adult)