Aimée Munezero’s book La femme que je suis devenue offers a powerful and deeply human story that stretches across continents and eras, weaving personal truth into the larger fabric of history. Rather than approaching gender identity as an abstract concept or a social debate, the book roots it in lived experience, in the body and memory of one young woman who has navigated adversity, displacement, and self-discovery with remarkable clarity. Aimée’s voice carries the weight of someone who has always known who she was, even when the world around her lacked the tools or willingness to understand it.
From the earliest pages, the reader encounters a child in Rwanda who feels unmistakably like a girl, yet grows up in an environment where such a truth exists without language or acknowledgment. The young Aimée senses her own femininity with a mix of certainty and innocence, but she is surrounded by a culture in which this experience is not only unspoken but incomprehensible. Her family members have little framework for recognizing her identity; their discomfort and silence form an invisible barrier that she must learn to navigate long before she has the vocabulary to describe herself. Her reality, at this stage, is both simple and complicated. She knows she is a girl, yet she must live within expectations shaped by a society where gender variance is rarely discussed and often dismissed.
