David Mwambari. Navigating Cultural Memory: Commemoration and Narrative in Post-Genocide Rwanda. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. 336 pp. $83. Hardback. ISBN: 9780190942304.

Memory: Commemoration and Narrative in Postgenocide Rwanda, David Mwambari consciously seeks to apply "decolonial approaches to memory" (26) to inform his analysis of Rwanda.He challenges both the degree to which understandings of Rwanda are modeled on the example of the Holocaust rather than genocides and mass atrocities in the Global South and ways in which a master narrative embraced by Rwanda's new elite, in cooperation with the international community, silences alternative narratives about Rwanda's past.Mwambari argues for a "dignity-centered turn" (37) to the analysis of memory, centering his work on the Rwandan concept of agaciro, which means "dignity, self-worth, and self-respect in relation to another's Agaciro" (7).Mwambari then explores both the hegemonic master narrative of Rwanda's past and of the genocide in particular and the diverse ways in which the Rwandan public has responded.He finds that Rwandans fall into the categories of Champions, who embrace the master narrative; Antagonists, who challenge it and offer counternarratives; and Fatalists, who seek to avoid focusing on the narratives entirely.A major observation is that even in the face of an attempt to create a hegemonic discourse about past events, people react differently, and their reactions are not determined by their ethnic identity, status as a genocide survivor, or other social positioning.In addition, he notes, people's perspectives change across time.Mwambari's book is welcome in part because so few of the publications on Rwanda are written by Rwandans.Going back to the late colonial era, Rwanda has long received disproportionate focus from scholars.Since the genocide, international scholarly interest in Rwanda has exploded even further, with countless articles and books appearing on both the genocide and postgenocide society and politics in leading journals and publishing houses.Yet very few of the titles published in the Global North are written by Rwandans.According to analysis by Phil Clark, Nicola Palmer, and Felix Ndahinda, only 13 out of 398 articles published in leading journals between 1994 and 2019 had Rwandan authors.Although a project they led has helped publish a number of articles, Jean-Paul Kimonyo's two books, Rwanda's Popular Genocide and Transforming Rwanda, are among the very few recent scholarly book-length studies of Rwanda written by a Rwandan scholar.To suggest that Mwambari's new book is vital only as a Rwandan academic voice would, however, diminish its significance.His analysis offers important new ideas