Book Review: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families
This paper provides a critical review of Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (1998), an account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which an estimated 800,000 Tutsi were killed over 100 days. The review examines how religious, national, racial, and ethnic groupings functioned as instruments of mass violence, how European colonialism entrenched divisions between Hutu and Tutsi populations, and how Rwandan politics and nongovernmental organizations contributed to — or failed to prevent — the slaughter. The paper argues that Gourevitch's work illuminates the systemic and institutional dimensions of the genocide.
- Introduction: Overview of book and genocide background
- Religious, National, Racial, and Ethnic Groupings in the Genocide: How ethnic and religious identity fueled mass killing
- European Colonialism, Rwandan Politics, and the Role of Aid Organizations: Colonial roots and institutional failures enabling genocide
- Conclusion: Synthesis of Gourevitch's central argument
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its analysis directly in textual evidence, using precise page citations from Gourevitch to support each analytical claim.
- It contextualizes the genocide across multiple causal layers — cultural, colonial, political, and institutional — rather than attributing violence to a single factor.
- The introduction efficiently orients the reader with key facts (dates, death toll, rate of killing) that establish the historical stakes before analysis begins.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses comparative framing effectively — most notably, the repeated comparison to the Holocaust — to give readers a reference point for the scale and speed of the Rwandan genocide. This technique anchors abstract statistics in recognizable historical context without deflecting from Rwanda's specific circumstances.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a clear three-part structure: an introduction that frames the book and previews the argument; a two-section analytical body that first addresses ethnic and religious factors, then turns to colonial history and institutional failures; and a conclusion that synthesizes Gourevitch's central thesis. Each body section maps directly to a declared analytical lens, keeping the argument organized and easy to follow.
Introduction
The chilling title of Philip Gourevitch's book, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families (1998), is taken from a group letter written by members of the Tutsi clergy to an Adventist church leader, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, pleading for his protection from the Hutu majority in Rwanda. Gourevitch's book concerns the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994, in which the Hutu majority systematically massacred the minority Tutsi population. As a result of this campaign of ethnic cleansing, an estimated 800,000 Tutsi were killed over the course of a 100-day period from April to July 1994. During the height of the massacre, Gourevitch reports that members of the Tutsi population were being killed at nearly three times the rate of Jewish deaths during the Nazi Holocaust.
To better understand the events that contributed to this horrific slaughter, this paper provides a critical review of Gourevitch's book, including a discussion of how religious, national, racial, and ethnic groupings in Rwanda were used as tools for genocide. A discussion of how European colonialism, Rwandan politics, and the role of different aid organizations also contributed to the genocide is followed by a summary of the research in the conclusion.
Religious, National, Racial, and Ethnic Groupings in the Genocide
For an event of this magnitude, it would seem that surprisingly little is known in the West. Estimates of the number of Tutsi killed by Hutu forces in Rwanda range from 500,000 to 1 million during the period beginning April 6, 1994 — when the genocide started — through the following July, when the Rwandese Patriotic Front's defeat of the Hutu forces ended the killing (Gourevitch 1998). According to Gourevitch, Hutu militants compiled lists much like the Nazis had, and reports indicate that Hutu génocidaires killed 800,000 people in just one hundred days — 333 an hour, or five and a half lives every minute — at a rate "nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust" (45).
The strong ties binding the Hutu and Tutsi peoples together made the taking of sides virtually inevitable. When authority figures emerge in these communal settings, it is traditional for people to follow their lead. This deeply ingrained cultural mindset helped establish the conditions in which such atrocities could take place. According to Gourevitch, the Rwandan genocide was the reflection of "communal obligation turned on its head" (34). Further exacerbating the situation for the minority Tutsi was the institutionalized and systematic way in which national agencies, the various denominations of Rwandan churches, and the historic ethnic groupings of Hutu and Tutsi all allowed the genocide to endure for so long. Everyone took sides, but no side was safe.
The author also points out that a cultural acceptance of recurring violence contributed to the severity of the genocide. As one prominent Rwandan told Gourevitch: "[S]ince I was four or five years old, I have seen houses destroyed, I have seen people being killed, every few years — '64, '66, '67, '73. So probably I told myself it's not going to be serious" (108). These problems, however, did not emerge in isolation but represent a complex legacy of European colonialism, Rwandan politics, and the role played by aid organizations — issues examined in the following section.
Conclusion
As a result of Philip Gourevitch's efforts in this book, the world is slowly beginning to learn something about the reality of what actually took place in Rwanda during the closing years of the twentieth century. Gourevitch paints a grim picture of the events that led to the 1994 genocide, in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were massacred to the point where the Hutus almost succeeded in completely eliminating the Tutsi segment of the Rwandan population — as well as countless Hutus who opposed the slaughter in the first place.
The systematic and institutionalized method by which this slaughter took place was not unique to Rwanda, but Gourevitch suggests that a combination of factors — a cultural acceptance of violence, the nefarious roles played by NGOs, Rwandan governmental agencies, and the nation's churches — all contributed to the genocide that took place during those terrible months of 1994. Gourevitch's book remains an essential document for understanding how ordinary institutions and ordinary people can become instruments of mass atrocity. A fuller account of the international community's response can be found in encyclopedic treatments of the genocide that complement Gourevitch's on-the-ground narrative.
Works Cited
Gourevitch, Philip. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998.
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