January 26, 2007
The eight-degree weather that recently hit New York City
suddenly didn’t seem so bad when compared to living in a 4’x3’
Rwandan bathroom with seven other women for 91 days — the subject
of a book discussion held on the Queens campus as part of the
University’s 13th annual
celebration of Founder’s Week.
A score of St. John’s faculty, students and staff gathered on
January 26 in the Donovan Hall Community Room to discuss the 2006
book Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan
Holocaust, an autobiographical account written by Rwandan
genocide survivor
Immaculée Ilibagiza, who will visit campus on January 31 to
deliver a lecture on her gut-wrenching story of captivity and how
she lived to tell it.
The book discussion and lecture are highlights of Founder’s
Week, which honors St. Vincent de Paul and celebrates the St.
John’s mission of serving the poor and disadvantaged. The theme of
this year’s weeklong ceremony is Respect + Compassion =
Solidarity.
Pamela J. Kirk Rappaport, Ph.D., Associate Professor of
Theology and Religious Studies and an expert on female theologians
and mystics, served as moderator of the discussion. She began by
summarizing Ilibagiza’s story: her Tutsi ethnicity, her exile from
her village, her savior in the form of a Protestant minister, and
her 91-day enclosure in a hideaway bathroom — during which time the
21 year-old Ilibagiza prayed the Rosary every day, saw multiple
visions of Christ, learned English by reading the Bible, spoke in
tongues, lost 40 pounds and slept each night layered within a
pancake-stack of eight women.
The discussion was “so humanizing,” said Alyssa Monturi, a
junior French/Italian double-major from Midland Park, NJ.
“[Ilibagiza] is so Christ-like, and I’ll never forget her story.
I’m so excited for the lecture next week. I have to hear this woman
speak.”
The discussion was introduced by Mary Ann Dantuono, Associate
Director of the St. John’s Vincentian Center for Church and
Society, which sponsored the event. Dantuono noted that
Ilibagiza’s strife and survival represented the strife and survival
of mankind. “Whether we live in Rwanda or New York City, we are all
global citizens,” she said. Left to Tell encapsulates the
2007 Founder’s Week theme “because it represents the virtue of
solidarity.”
“The book is about a journey of faith,” said Kirk Rappaport,
noting that Ilibagiza's parents and two brothers were killed during
the 1994 genocide. “We see through Imaculee’s story that prayer
practices and spiritual outreach can be a form of survival.”
Ilibagiza, who wrote 3,000 words of the book while trapped in
the bathroom, eventually forgave her brother’s killer because,
noted Kirk Rappaport, “forgiveness was the only thing she had to
give.”
When the event turned to discussion, participants marveled at
how genocide could happen just decades after the Holocaust, and how
it continues to replicate in places like Darfur today. Common
questions were, “Why does God let the innocent suffer?”; “What is
woman’s role in peace and development?”; and “Why have affluent
nations ignored history, and why do we continue to overlook mass
murder?”
“The most powerful thing in the book is the language,”
noted Professor of Italian
Annalisa Saccà, Ph.D., recognizing the story’s dramatic
evocations of present-day Iraq. “[Ilibagiza] wants to use words to
scratch people’s souls; to touch you in a way that makes you want
to scream. You become part of her history. You cry with her. You
pray with her.”
“Immaculée is a very good example of the lived Christian reality
in a polarized, fractured world, and the way she converted the
experience into an act of forgiveness is the ultimate,” commented
Sister Margaret J. Kelly, D.C., Executive Director of the
Vincentian Center. Sister Kelly invited Ilibagiza to the St. John’s
campus after reading Left to Tell.
Turning to the students, Dantuono summed up the overriding mood
of the moment: “We are called to peace and making the word better.
My generation has lived through more than one genocide, and we
don’t want you to as well. Thank God Immaculée was left to
tell.”
A copy of Left to Tell is being held at the St. John’s
Library.