This week, The Extraordinary Times blog caught up with activist, philanthropist, and author Sandra Uwiringiyimana (oo-Wee-Ring-yee-ma-na). Sandra is a co-founder at Jimbere Fund, an organization that aims to revitalize distressed communities and foster peace in Congo by empowering women economically. Sandra was born and raised in Congo, until she was forced to flee due to the ongoing conflicts in 2004. Shortly after fleeing her home, Sandra survived a massacre that claimed 166 lives, including her sister’s. Since her family’s resettlement to New York in 2007, Sandra has fought hard to raise awareness about the Gatumba massacre and call for justice. She has become a voice for women and girls, refugees and immigrants, and forgotten people like her Tribe. Sandra now works to ensure that no Congolese girl ever has to leave home in search of opportunity through the Jimbere Fund. She continues to use her platform to advocate for migrants and refugees all over the world. Sandra’s memoir How Dare the Sun Rise, (Harper Collins) is out now.
Sandra Uwiringiyimana will be talking at 7pm this Thursday, October 27 at Miami University Hamilton campus’s Harry T. Wilks Conference Center: http://miamioh.edu/regionals/rsvp. * Despite having survived horrible trauma, you describe your childhood as a mostly happy time of life. What are your fondest memories of growing up in Africa? My fondest memories of growing up in Congo are celebrating holidays with my family. Christmas and New Year were a time of celebration; during this season, my parents would indulge us in new clothes and favorite foods, like chocolate and meats- things we only ate on special occasions. My mother and aunts would make a lot of food, and my extended family, friends, and neighbors would join us in a day filled with food bellies, music, dancing, and laughter. * What were your first impressions of The United States, after you arrived in Rochester NY as a young refugee? Growing up, I thought America was a paradise; "land of milk and honey," they would say. I thought America was a utopia where hunger and violence were unheard of and peace and prosperity were abundant. It felt like a completely different world from the one I was living in. However, resettling to America as a young refugee came with many challenges, like language barriers, cultural differences, and even adjusting to the brutal cold. There were also some unexpected challenges, like racism and the systematic oppression of black people. Despite these challenges, my overall impression of America was that it was normal. Once I got past the surface-level dissimilarities, I found that Life in America is like it was back home. People in America also struggle with poverty, illnesses, and conflicts, and they long to feel accepted in society. America is not a magical place like I always visualized it would be; it's just a different place on the same earth. * How would you compare your education in Africa compared to America? There's simply no comparing my education in Congo to the one I received in America; it would be unfair and ridiculous to compare the two. First, There's no public school system in Congo. That means every school was privately-owned, and every student had to pay tuition to attend- a fact that made it nearly impossible for most of the kids to attend school. At school, most kids only had one notebook for all of their classes and had to take handwritten notes on everything due to a lack of access to textbooks. At home, we would have to study for exams before it was dark out because many households didn't have electricity. My mother used to stay awake with us during exams to ensure that our lamps wouldn't run out of petrol before we finished studying- something I think is hard for the average American child to comprehend. Of course, the American education system is not perfect, but it is a privilege that we shouldn't take for granted. * What role has art played in processing your trauma and advocating for other survivors? Art has always been a big part of my life. From a young age, I enjoyed reciting poems, dancing, and expressing myself creatively, so naturally, it played a vital role in my healing. I started advocacy because I was tired of feeling like people who looked like me didn't matter in the world; I had no idea at the time that I was using art to heal because I didn't know I was sick. It was through advocating for myself and my people that started to realize just how much I had been traumatized by my experiences. I always say that art and activism saved me. Art gave me strength, and activism gave me purpose. * Can you tell readers a little bit about your current advocacy and future projects? In 2016 I launched the Jimbere Fund, a grassroots organization that is on a mission to mobilize, prepare, finance, and launch women-led enterprises in rural communities of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Our goal is to revitalize communities and lift people out of poverty by creating jobs and stimulating local economies. I currently sit on the board of directors at Refuge Point, an organization that advances lasting solutions for at-risk refugees and supports the humanitarian community to do the same. I am still passionately advocating for Justice for the Gatumba massacre. It has been 18 years of waiting for justice, and the survivors will not rest until that happens.
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This week The Extraordinary Times caught up with Catherine Grace Katz, author of The Daughters of Yalta. Katz is a writer and historian from Chicago, with degrees in history from Harvard and Cambridge. In conjunction with her historical passion, she is currently pursuing her JD degree at Harvard Law School. Her book, The Daughters of Yalta shines a light on three remarkable women—Sarah Churchill, Anna Roosevelt, and Kathleen Harriman—the daughters of Winston Churchill, FDR, and US Ambassador to Moscow Averell Harriman, respectively. In her remarkable story of fathers and daughters whose relationships were tested and strengthened by history, Katz explores the fateful 1945 Yalta conference in present-day Ukraine, where the endgame of World War II was plotted, and the seeds of the Cold War were sown.
The Daughters of Yalta is this year’s Hamilton, Ohio “One City, One Book” public reading selection. Catherine Grace Katz will be speaking at the Parrish Auditorium of Miami University’s Hamilton Campus on Thursday October 20 at 7pm. This is a free public event, cosponsored by the Michael J. Colligan History Project and “One City, One Book.” A book-signing and reception to follow. All are welcome but RSVP encouraged online: miamioh.edu/regionals/rsvp * What inspired you to write The Daughters of Yalta? This journey was really one where coincidences all aligned in ways I never could have imagined. I had studied Churchill in a small way for both my undergrad thesis and graduate dissertation, but thought I was done with history in a formal sense after finishing my MPhil. I went to New York to work in finance like every other recent graduate, and lo and behold, in the lobby of my office was a wonderful bookstore called Chartwell Booksellers—named for Winston Churchill's country home—which specializes in books by and about Churchill. It was fate. Through the owner of the bookstore, I met a group called the International Churchill Society, as well as members of the Churchill family. Right around that time, the Churchill Archives in Cambridge (UK) were opening the papers of Sarah Churchill for the first time and the International Churchill Society asked if I would be interested in writing an article about them. I said yes, thinking it would just be a fun way to stay engaged with history and do a bit of writing—meanwhile I was applying to law school. As soon as I started reading Sarah's papers, I was absolutely fascinated by her wartime experience and the fact that Sarah Churchill, Kathy Harriman, and Anna Roosevelt had all served as their fathers' aides at Yalta. I knew there was a story there just waiting to be told. The rest, as they say, was history! * Why did the allies choose Yalta as the site of their conference? There's that great Churchill quip where he said something along the lines of, "We couldn't have found a worse place for the conference if we had spent ten years looking for one." Yalta was really the least bad of terrible options. Stalin was paranoid about security and refused to leave his own borders. He was also afraid of flying. Practically, he knew he held more cards than did FDR and Churchill at that point, so they realized if they were going to meet in person, they would have to go to him. The Crimea and the Black Sea were about the most western locations that were accessible, and after scouting a few options, Yalta was deemed to have the least run-down accommodations and was the most easily accessed. However, they recognized they would have to fly there, rather than arrive by ship, as the Black Sea was mined. So, by process of elimination, Yalta was it! * Can you briefly describe the process of researching and writing your book? Archival research is a treasure hunt, you never know what you're going to find! It can be both frustrating and exhilarating, and you have to let the sources guide the story. I was able to read the letters and diaries of the daughters, as well as those of a number of other Yalta Conference participants. The families of the three women were incredibly gracious, allowing me to read their papers, and all three families sat for interviews with me. I will always be so grateful for that. I also had the opportunity to interview people like Lady Jane Williams, Churchill's secretary, who is one of the last people alive today to have worked with Churchill. So, between reading about Yalta in the daughters' own words as the action was unfolding and being able to call upon the memories of people still alive today who knew and loved these figures more than anyone, it made a story about grand, high stakes geopolitics something that was deeply personal and familiar. * Which of the daughters--if any--did you most identify with, and why? Though I was the same age as Kathy Harriman (27) when I started working on the book and almost the same age as Sarah Churchill (I was 29, she was 30) when it was published, and I think being that age certainly helped me better understand them, their outlook, their relationships, and their roles at Yalta, I was very cognizant of not writing myself into the story by identifying with one or all of them. Instead, I think one of my friends put it really well. She said she thinks there's a part of each of the daughters in each of us. We like to think of ourselves as Kathy, we aspire to be Sarah, but in our hearts, we all know we have a lot of Anna. At any point in our lives, we may identify with one of the daughters more than the others, but I think their experiences really speak to people because there is something about each of them that resonates with us—even those of us who aren't the daughter of a president or prime minister. * Do you see any strong parallels or connections between the setting of your book in the Crimea and today's battleground of Ukraine? Absolutely. When I started writing this, I thought a lot about Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and how more than 75 years after Yalta, we continue to get it wrong when dealing with Russia. History shapes Russia's outlook on the world, particularly on what it considers its vulnerable western flank—the flatlands of Poland and Ukraine—the pathway of invasion from Napoleon to Hitler. This has created a deep regional paranoia, one shared by the Tsars, Stalin, and Putin today. There are so many parallels between Poland in 1945 and Ukraine today, even beyond the physical battleground and setting of the Yalta Conference, particularly things like the discovery of mass graves. From FDR to recent presidents, there has been a tendency to think about the relationship between the president and the Russian or Soviet leader as one that could be better if only there could be a leader-to-leader personal breakthrough, and this thinking has let us down again and again. We need to learn from history, especially Yalta, to better understand where the American or Western democratic outlook on things like deterring acts of aggression do not line up with the Russian outlook and shift our mindset to reevaluate the kinds of pressure that would actually induce Russia to alter its behavior. * What projects or challenges are next on your horizon? The first project is finishing law school! I am in my third and final year at Harvard Law School, and going forward, I would love to find a way to bring history and law together, not only in telling stories about the past, but also as tools to think about how we can best tackle long standing, complex problems facing our world today. I am also excited to develop Daughters of Yalta in other mediums, including for the screen, and of course dive into my next book (so long as I pass the bar!). |
AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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