The Body Speaks

-- By Tom Phillips

Midway through "Unwanted," a woman steps forward and begins to sing "Ave Maria," in a sweet, clear soprano -- then suddenly rips the name of Mary into a horrific shriek. It's a heart-stopping moment that encapsulates the theme of this piece: the trauma of women raped in war, and the horror they experience bearing the children of their tormentors.

"Unwanted" is the work of Dorothee Munyaneza, a pastor's daughter who was 12 during the genocidal civil war in Rwanda, in 1994. She escaped the war with her family, but years later went back to interview the women who were among its victims -- who carried the unwanted children, often the offspring of men who had murdered their fathers and brothers. These mothers instinctively nursed their babies, against the wishes of their relatives. One recounts a conversation with an aunt who advised her to kill the child before it opened its eyes. "Look," said her auntie, "your child resembles a hyena. How can you nurse a hyena?"  Munyaneza, writhing and recoiling, embodies the emotions of the mother as she kept the boy, nursed the hyena, hid her face from her own kin.