In 1994, Clemantine and her sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety. When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted refugee status in the United States. Claire, who had for so long protected and provided for Clemantine, was a single mother struggling to make ends meet, while Clemantine was taken in by a family who raised her as their own. She seemed to live the American dream: attending private school, taking up cheerleading, and graduating from Yale. Yet the years of being treated as less than human, of going hungry and seeing death, could not be erased.
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