Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2007
Pages: 240
Rating: Recommend
Synopsis: This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.
What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.
In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.
This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
Review: A book without a conclusion; that's a new one for me. It's a major strike against this memoir, but there's still something to take away from it as a whole.
This takes place primarily between the years of 1993 and 1997, and it was impossible for me to ignore what was going on in my world at the same time Ishmael was living in his hell. I graduated from high school in 1995 so I lived in my parents' bubble for the first half of his nightmare, and then lived it up in college for the second half. My biggest worry was what dress to wear to the next school dance, or whether or not I should get up for my 8am class or send my roommate to take notes (yes, that happened).
Americans really are isolated and sheltered from so much. Now that I have children, I selfishly hope it stays that way.
This is my 2016 Reading Challenge's political memoir.
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