I was hoping that Ken and I would be able to see Hotel Rwanda this coming weekend. Even though it's only Tuesday, it looks like I've got too much work to get away. Maybe next week? That seems to be a long refrain these days.

I'm interested in the Rwandan genocide because, clueless as I must be, I was largely unaware of it as it was happening in 1994. Swept up by my own problems, I chose to look the other way. (I don't remember consciously doing this; in fact, I don't remember anything about it, but that must have been what happened.) Since 2000, I've become much more globally aware, and have done some reading.

Right now I have the book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch, a journalist who toured Rwanda in 1995 after the bloodbath in which 300,000 people lost their lives. I want to read it because I agree with Samantha Powers, author of Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, that if enough Americans voiced their protests about genocides to our leaders, then they would pressure other nations, the United Nations, and the governments of the country where genocide is occurring to stop.