The purpose of this research is to identity the significance of authorship in the literature of the Rwandan Genocide. It will examine the arguably un-interrogated condition in which literature(s) are assigned value, dependent on such qualities as the author’s proximity to the events described, the authenticity of the narrative, and its aesthetic value. This trajectory goes far beyond who is best equipped to represent the trauma of genocide, or who “owns” its memory; instead, it hopes to determine the manner in which genocide is experienced without the author necessarily experiencing The Genocide. Most of all, it wishes to interrogate the ethics of representing an experience that may not be one’s “own.” will be accomplished, using a content analysis of Rwandan survivor testimony, the African Writers’ Project, “Écrire par devoir de mémoire,” and Western literature about the Genocide. An examination of these groups of literature will reveal that proximity to the events is valuable, but an outside voice is also useful, in representation of the Rwandan Genocide.
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