109 pages • 3 hours read
Sandra UwiringiyimanaHow Dare the Sun Rise
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | YA | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 9-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
The book returns to the scene from the first chapter, where Burundi rebels were shooting at the refugee camp and Sandra had a gun pointed at her head. She was sure she would die; instead, the gunman kicked her to the ground and chased someone else.
Sandra rose and ran. She got to a nearby farm and hid behind a tree. A woman saw her there and asked, in Sandra’s language, where her parents were. Sandra told the woman she feared that her mother was dead. The woman took Sandra’s hand and led her through the darkness. Sandra saw her uncle Ezekiel and told him what had happened. He assured Sandra that he saw Rachel and, though she was shot, she was not dead.
Ezekiel, Sandra, and the stranger searched the field for Rachel. They tapped women on the shoulder; each one turned, looked at Sandra “with vacant eyes,” and declared, “I’m not her” (63). Sandra began to wonder if Ezekiel may have imagined seeing her mother. Just then, like a mirage, Rachel appeared. She was standing alone, wrapped in a sheet. When she saw Sandra, she studied her daughter’s face before they hugged each other hard.
Sandra saw that her mother was bleeding from a hole in her side and “shivering in pain” (63). She then realized that Rachel was not with Deborah, who had been clinging to their mother the last time Sandra saw her. Sandra looked into her mother’s eyes, as though searching for the answer to her unasked question. Rachel sensed what Sandra wanted to ask, and Sandra sensed the truth in her mother’s eyes and began sobbing. Rachel then revealed that Deborah, Sandra’s aunt, and two cousins were shot and killed. Rachel “had been left for dead in a pile of bodies” (64). She overhead the killers talking about burning the pile, so she quietly crawled away and ran toward the farm. Rachel did not know if Prudence or Alex were still alive. She had seen Heritage, then lost him. The family’s next mission was to find Heritage.
Chapter 10 Summary
Around five o’clock in the morning, the family found Heritage. He acted as though he was fine, though his arms had been shot so badly that they were dangling from his torso. He confirmed that he had seen Prudence and Alex. When they found Alex, he was wearing “a sparkly red shirt designed for girls and a too-small pair of [girls’] shorts” (66). He explained that he had been sleeping naked when their attackers arrived, so he borrowed the clothes from a nearby family.
Sandra then found her cousin Inge and learned that his mother and younger brothers were dead. She also learned that her close friend Ziraje had been killed, but another close friend, Justine, survived. They reunited briefly, then got separated and never saw each other again.
Sandra and her family walked around the camp, observing its burnt remains. They tried to find the bodies of Deborah and Sandra’s aunt and cousins. Rachel found Deborah’s charred skull near where their tent had been; she picked it up and cradled it. They then found the body of one of Sandra’s cousins, which had not burned completely. Nearby, UN officials were picking up limbs and tossing them into plastic bags.
Now, Sandra and her family had nothing—not even their photo albums. They were also unable to bury Deborah. They learned that “a brutal militia group from Burundi had carried out the attack: Forces Nationales de Libération, led by a man named Agathon Rwasa” (69).
Chapter 11 Summary
The next day, Sandra awoke in the home of a relative who lived near the capital of Burundi, unsure of how she got there. Rachel, Alex, and Heritage were in a hospital, recovering from their wounds. When they arrived at the house, they all shared mattresses to sleep. One day, Prudence announced that they needed to leave. He noticed how Rachel’s spirit had faded and figured she would feel safer outside of Burundi. In 2005, the family got onto a bus and moved to Rwanda.
Sandra’s siblings, Adele and Christian, had been staying with their grandparents in the mountains before they were all reunited in Rwanda. In their new country, they sometimes “went for days with no food or water” (76). Prudence struggled to find a job as an undocumented foreigner. Refusing to give up hope, he kept a list of things the family should pray for, including food, education, and work. Rachel encouraged Sandra to pray, believing that God listened more closely to children. Sandra was skeptical, but she obeyed her mother and prayed all the time.
Chapter 12 Summary
To lift Sandra’s spirits, her parents took her to visit a cousin in East Africa. Sandra admired this fashionable and hip older cousin, who was married with children. At the house, among the other children, Sandra felt restored to some normalcy. Then, one day, the father of the youngest daughter, whom Sandra calls Ganza, ordered her to go the market. Sandra offered to go with her, but Ganza’s father wanted Sandra to stay. After his daughter left, he attempted to rape Sandra. She worried that, if she were raped, her family might discard her. Then, she heard the front door open; Ganza had returned. Sandra told her what happened, but her friend refused to believe her father could do such a thing. They never discussed the matter again, and Sandra never told anyone else about her assault.
She and her family stayed in the house for three more months, but Sandra made sure she was never again left alone with Ganza’s father. She became wary of men, particularly older ones. If an uncle or male cousin hugged her, she became anxious, which Rachel noticed. Sandra later learned that the man’s wife eventually left him. The experience has since instilled in her a determination to speak out against sexual predators.
Chapters 9-12 Analysis
The narrative shifts back to the massacre and its inevitable aftermath: the search for survivors. Heritage’s stoic reaction to his injuries is the result of his military training to tolerate pain and violence. Rachel, on the other hand, was too unsettled by the shock of losing Deborah to be aware of her own physical injury. In Chapter 10, in the wake of the tragic loss of family members and friends, Sandra introduces the symbolism behind the book’s title: “I remember thinking: How dare the sun rise, as if it were any other day, after such a gruesome night” (66). The rising sun is symbolic of renewal and the continuation of life, which outrages and offends Sandra in this moment, who has just suffered the traumas of losing her younger sister and believing her mother was dead.
One of Sandra’s most courageous acts in this memoir is to name her family and tribe’s attacker: the former Hutu rebel, Agathon Rwasa. This move seems especially bold, considering the extent of Rwasa’s power in Burundi. On February 16, 2020, the National Congress for Liberty (NCL), the party that opposes Burundi’s current leadership, nominated Rwasa to run for president in the national election, against an ally of the current president, who has been declared guilty of human rights abuses, notably crackdowns against protestors. Sandra’s insistence on speaking out about Rwasa, hailed by some as a better leadership choice, parallels with her insistence on speaking out about her sexual assault. Though she refrains from naming her attacker to protect a friend, Sandra’s determination to tell the truth about what she has suffered means she has not been cowed by attempts to destroy her self-esteem and her life. She also refuses to allow men like Rwasa, who have thrived off of violence and intimidation, to control the narratives of those whom they have oppressed.
