Memory dialogics: Scholastique Mukasonga's literary renegotiation of Rwandan Genocide narratives.

This article examines how post-genocide memorialization in Rwanda, dominated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), restricts public narratives by framing ethnic identities as fixed categories of victim and perpetrator, often silencing nuanced individual memories. Focusing on the literary works of Rwandan-French author Scholastique Mukasonga, the study explores how literature dialogically engages with official State narratives—both supporting and subtly renegotiating them—by fictionalizing complex emotions and experiences, particularly around ethnicity and gender. Mukasonga’s memoires largely align with the State’s ethnicized victimhood narrative, while her fiction and use of the French language allow her to critique gender norms and reveal interpersonal tensions that challenge simplified ethnic binaries. The article concludes that literature’s dialogic capacity to incorporate multiple, sometimes contradictory, narratives and emotions offers a potential avenue for deeper reconciliation in Rwanda, though such nuance remains constrained by political controls over public memorialization.