How Dare the Sun Rise

March 20, 2017
In this gripping and timely memoir, Uwiringiyimana, a member of the Banyamulenge (a minority tribe in the Democratic Republic of Congo), recounts a childhood shaped by experiences as a
refugee in Africa and the United States. Memories of her younger sister, Deborah, who died at age six when their tribe was attacked in a refugee camp, bookend the narrative. While the trauma of surviving the massacre reverberates throughout the story, the author also shares how multiple incidents of being treated as an outsider contributed to her nuanced sense of identity. As a child, “ would say I wasn’t truly Congolese.” After the massacre, when Sandra’s family participated in a resettlement program and moved to Rochester, N.Y., she entered “a different kind of war zone” in which she was defined by her skin color. With compassion and perspicacity, Uwiringiyimana shares the journey through which she became a courageous advocate for her tribe and refugees everywhere: “This is my story.... I must keep telling it, until the international community proves.... that my family and all others are not disposable.” Ages 13–up. Agent: Jess Regel, Foundry Literary + Media.

Starred review from April 1, 2017
Gr 7 Up-The greatest storytellers connect with readers through universal truths, and Uwiringiyimana tells her own profound story with clarity and honesty. After a heart-pounding cliff-hanger opening, Uwiringiyimana goes back in time to revisit her childhood in Uvira, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although occasionally interrupted by bouts of war and subsequent migration, her childhood was rich and fulfilling. However, everything changed during a stay at a refugee camp. The camp at Gatumba was attacked by the Forces for National Liberation, a militant rebel group-a deadly event that would forever alter Uwiringiyimana and her family. The resulting narrative is a powerful look at the family's move to the United States, the challenges of adjusting to a different culture, Uwiringiyimana's painful recognition of her trauma from the massacre, and, finally, the healing she experienced as she took ownership of her emotional needs. Throughout, readers will be able to relate to Uwiringiyimana's adolescent struggles of fitting in and her relationship with her parents as a new adult. The title is a critical piece of literature, contributing to the larger refugee narrative in a way that is complex and nuanced but still accessible for a YA audience. VERDICT This poignant memoir is a must-have for teen collections.-Hannah Ralston, Webster Public Library, NY

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2017
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)

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 15, 2017
Grades 8-10 As America's doors threaten to shut against refugees, this memoir could not be timelier. As a 10-year-old in 2004, Uwiringiyimana (pronounced oo-wee-ring-GEE-yi-mah-nah) and her family fled conflict in their native Congo for a U.N. refugee camp over the border in Burundi. The stay, overcrowded and miserable as the sanctuary was, proved short-lived: on the night of August 13, armed rebels attacked the camp, slaughtering 166 people. Uwiringiyimana's narrative starts with a terrifying moment-by-moment account of that horrific event. Her ability to summon the chaos and terror is extraordinary, but then, so is she. Plagued by PTSD and severe, recurrent depression in the years sincethe U.N. succeeded in bringing the surviving members of her family to the U.S. in 2007she has emerged as a powerful spokesperson for the plight of the dispossessed. Her account of the family's first few years in upstate New York, where she was made to feel again unwanted and alien at school, is almost as heartbreaking as the memory of that one world-shattering night.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2017
Congolese refugee Sandra Uwiringi-yimana recounts life before, during, and after war. At ten, Sandra sees her sister gunned down along with others at the camp where she and her family were temporarily staying. Before readers can find out which of Sandra's family members survived, she takes us back to her life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where, as Banyamulenge people, they were considered stateless foreigners. Despite the discrimination, Sandra spent much of her childhood in a comfortable middle-class home, although frequent civil unrest would require the family to enter refugee camps for a time and then return home. After the night her sister was murdered, she and her surviving family members began the long process of applying for asylum in the United States. From there, Sandra recounts her American adolescence, trying to make sense of what race means in America and how she fits in as an African but not an African American. The prose may be workmanlike, but the politically and culturally complex picture of Africa that the author paints is welcome, and the complexities of black identity for recent immigrants versus that of diasporic black people are not often touched upon in YA literature. sarah hannah gomez

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2017
With Abigail Pesta. At ten, after seeing her sister gunned down, Congolese refugee Uwiringiyimana's family began the long process of applying for asylum in the U.S. From there, Sandra recounts her American adolescence, trying to make sense of how she fits in as an African but not an African American. The politically and culturally complex picture of Africa that the author paints is welcome.

(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)