Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the book.

Pre-Reading “Icebreaker”

Left to Tell is the harrowing true story of Immaculée Ilibagiza, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. After surviving this ordeal, Immaculée went on to become a motivational speaker. She often discusses Faith and Forgiveness as two factors that helped her to recover from the atrocities she experienced in 1994.

• What characteristics of Immaculée’s Faith might have helped her to survive this ordeal? With what other stories are you familiar in which faith helped individuals to endure and overcome traumatic events?
• What questions do you have that might be more thoroughly explained in the book?

Teaching Suggestion:  In this 60 Minutes interview (content warning: violence, killing; corpses of genocide victims; mentions of fears of rape, violence, and death), Immaculée shares more about her story of survival and shows the infamous bathroom in which she and 7 other women hid for 91 days in order to survive their village’s massacre. The interview includes graphic visual depictions of violence. If you decide to share the interview or excerpts of it with students, they might discuss their general impressions of the clip while pointing out moments in which the themes of Faith and Forgiveness surface.