Often, still, my own life story feels fragmented, like beads unstrung. Each time I scoop up my memories, the assortment is slightly different. I worr… - Clemantine Wamariya

In Malawi, I used to write my name in dust on trucks, hoping my mother would see my loopy cursive and realize that I was alive.

There is so much human pain and suffering in the world. I want to honor all those difficult experiences and acknowledge their aftermath.

I needed to see the world in front of me clearly so I could perform my part well. I needed to crack the code. So many times, in my former life, I’d had to become someone else in order to stay out of a refugee camp or out of jail, to stay alive. I had played a mother. I had played a yes ma’am younger sister. I had made myself a nobody, invisible. Now I had to become this strange creature: an American teenager.