THE TEARS OF A MAN FLOW INWARD

Powerful memoir - the story of a child who survived the 13-year civil war in Burundi, and is now building a life in America.

As a little boy, Pacifique Irankunda lived through the thirteen-year civil war in Burundi, the war that upended his home and family, and destroyed Burundi's beautiful culture and traditions. He hid and watched as military units destroyed his village; he and his brother slept in the woods on nights when they heard shooting and violence. From his own memories and those of his family, he tells this story of surviving the devastating ethnic divisions and violence in a country that once had a rich and beautiful culture of belief and traditions, destroyed by the aftermath of a history of colonialism. Paci's extraordinary and wise mother, one of the inspiring beacons of light in this book, led her children and others in ingenious acts of survival and kindness, through her unique ability to bring out the good in people, generosity towards even the soldiers who threatened them, and in her role as a Mushingantahe, an honorary title for a chosen leader in the village.

Through his brother, whose story is told in Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains, Paci got to America, and graduated from college. His goal was to go back to Burundi and find a way to create change in the culture there. But he has since seen that his dream for recreating the Burundi he knew before the war is unlikely to come true.

Pacifique Irankunda was born in Burundi, a small country in East Africa between Rwanda, Tanzania, and the Congo. He came to America at the age of nineteen as a scholarship student at Deerfield Academy, through the auspices of his brother and of Tracy Kidder. His first published work, "Playing at Violence," appeared in The American Scholar and won a Pushcart Prize. He graduated from Williams College with a degree in psychology and political science. He currently lives in Brooklyn.