A Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
The blurb from the Washington Post on my cover of A Long Way Gone says, "Everyone in the world should read this book," and I mostly agree, and that's the reason for my four-star rating. Honestly, though, this is not the book it could be or should be, but it is what it is, and Ishmael Beah's story of his three-year ordeal as a teenager with the army of Sierra Leone calls our attention to the plight of child soldiers in Africa in a way that television and the newspapers cannot do.Here in America, blah, blah, blah, blah…but it’s true; here in America we pay little attention to the horrific suffering in Africa. We no longer read the newspaper, and few people watch the news. And of those who still do, I don’t know how many can truly differentiate anymore between real suffering and the canned suffering they indulge in through "reality" TV. This isn’t all that significantly different from how things were in the past, but I’d say we as a nation have a greater indifference today to foreign suffering based on the over-saturation of media and entertainment offerings. There’s an immense irony at work here. It’s possible that we see even more of the bad things happening on the other side of the world, courtesy of our constant connection to the 24-hour stream of information competing for our attention. But if we see something that moves us, in a matter of minutes we have clicked a link or flipped a channel and blithely moved on. Needless to say, the suffering continues.For example, a couple of years ago, Kony 2012 burst on the scene with an intensity that was surprising. Fourteen-year-olds were suddenly talking about child soldiers in Africa. But it all fizzled as quickly as it had gone viral, and then 14-year-olds were back to watching videos of cats on the Internet. Meanwhile, child soldiers continue killing and dying in Africa.I’m not all that much better than the typical 14-year-old, truth be told, so I’m glad I finally got around myself to reading A Long Way Gone because I’ve been meaning to read it for the past two or three years. And the reason I finally have read it is because my school district is doing a one-book-one-district summer reading thing this summer with A Long Way Gone, and I’m glad for that too because I know that Beah’s book about his experiences as a child soldier will make the issue more real for students than a viral video on their cell phones ever could.A Long Way Gone is an easy read and it’s a moving one. My only problem with the book is that Beah is not experienced enough a writer to tell his story as compellingly as he could, and his editors did not push him hard enough or re-work his material thoroughly enough to get the better, more compelling story. And that’s too bad because he has a gripping, heart-aching story to tell. It just doesn’t come across as well as it could have. For one, I want a little more sense of context for what is happening in the book, geographically, politically, historically. I guess I want the adult narrator Ishmael to be better informed than the traumatized boy Ishmael who is starving in the jungle as he is fleeing from the violence of the rebels, conscripted into the national army and then forced to loot and kill in the service of his country for the next three years before being just as violently removed from the jungle war and dropped into an orphanage/rehabilitation center in the capital city, just as ill-prepared to deal with the “normal” expectations of being a displaced victim of the war as he was being a child conscript killing people in the war. But the narrator doesn’t give the reader very much to understand what is occurring; we are as confused by the fighting and the politics as he is as a 12-year-old. In the front of the book is a map, and in the back is a chronology of pertinent historical and political events in Sierra Leone, but there’s not much effort on the part of the writer to connect the events of the narrative to the bigger picture of Sierra Leone’s political turmoil.I also want more detail and description throughout the book. I’d like to see better the horrors he experiences in the jungle, but I’d also like to better get a sense of life in Sierra Leone; I want to hear the people speak and see village life more clearly. I want to get a better sense of what it’s like to walk through the jungles starving and afraid. Perhaps I want too much from Beah. I understand his limitations as a writer and maybe instead of not being able to he really doesn’t want to get as detailed as I’d like him to be. But the best parts of the book are when the local color of life in Sierra Leone seeps into the narrative, Ishmael’s memories of life before wartime, his name-giving ceremony or other memories of his grandmother.After all, I guess I want better story telling from Beah because West African culture is one rich in story telling, and story telling plays an important role in Beah’s own story. In one village they come across, the boys are welcomed into a village instead of driven away. They are invited to a hunt and then later join the village feast with song and dance and story telling when it is all done. After the boys leave the village, Ishmael’s friend Musa tells them the tale of Bra Spider, and they all enjoy the extra, rich detail he added to his story. Later, after Ishmael is removed from the war by the UN and placed in a home for child soldiers, he is encouraged to tell his story to visitors from foreign aid organizations and NGOs who have come to the center to observe the boys. His ability to tell his story leads to an invitation to audition for a chance to tell his story at the UN in New York City, and he is chosen to go to the United Nations with teens from around the world to tell his story to the UN Economic and Social Council. Finally, the book ends with a story he learned as a boy, a story involving a terrible paradox leading to a terrible question that seems to point to the horrific problems with child soldiers in Africa and the inability of the world’s community to find an answer to this terrible problem. So I just wish Beah might have added more detail and description to make the story he tells in his book even more compelling. I’m a little like the boys as Musa tells his tale of Bra Spider who “listened attentively to see if he was going to embellish the story with more striking details.”This fall Beah is coming to our district to address our students and no doubt will read from his new book. I am looking forward to discussing A Long Way Gone with my own students, and I am looking forward to seeing Beah speak. Maybe I’ll even get his new book read by then, Radiance of Tomorrow, a novel this time, set in Sierra Leone.
Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone tells the story of himself, a young teen in the midst of political upheaval, where rebels everywhere are killing many of the innocent civilians of Africa. The book is set in Sierra Leone, where many African rebels were causing chaos at every town they passed by. Hoping to survive and maybe reunite with his family, Ishmael runs around Sierra Leone, where rebels hope to recruit young Africans like Ishmael himself. Ishmael wanders around Sierra Leone, examining the paranoia that the war has caused for the people, who usually are very peaceful, but at last gets caught by a rebel and forced to become a boy soldier, exposing himself to the savagery of war. The book exposes us to the savagery of war, which causes Ishmael, a previous happy-go-lucky person, into a killing machine, unappalled by the actions he does to innocent civilians. In one memorable moment, after leaving Mattru Jong, Ishmael’s grandmother’s homeland, Ishmael and his group of friends; Junior, Mohomad, and Tulloi; all head home with news that it has been attacked. While walking the six miles home, they hear the sound of a car, believing it to be a rebel, they ide behind a bush. The vehicle stops right in front of them, and the driver vomits blood, crying at the fact that he barely survived the attacks, his arms bleeding as if he had been shot not so long ago. A woman comes, also bloody, and asks for him to stand and opens up the doors of the car, revealing the bodies of his whole family, lifeless with their blood all over the ceiling and seats. Later, a man runs with the body of his son in his arms, rushing to the nearest hospital, uttering the words, “I will get you to the hospital, my boy, and everything will be fine” repeatedly, clinging onto the false sense of hope that kept him running. Lastly, a women walks towards Ishmael with a body on her back, shot dead as the women was running away. She halts at the center of the road, removing her child, a girl with her eyes open and an interrupted innocent smile on her face. With the bullet barely sticking out of the baby, the mother clings onto her child and rocks her, unable to shed tears or utter a single word due to fear and shock. Ultimately, the story of Ishmael is a story of the transformation of a boy, venturing away from his bare and innocent self, turning into an emotionless machine, hurting everyone and everything around him, and finally reverting back to normal through the kind care of people. It all adds up to the tale of the savagery of war, an element that can affect anyone which tells us that not only is war terrible as a whole, but terrible all the way down to the individual level. A Long Way Gone tells that very well, telling us that war causes loneliness and with loneliness comes the need to have revenge, causing people to blinded by rage. People are apathetic to issues outside their own environment, choosing to believe that it doesn’t really affect them. A Long Way Gone shows the people what life is like for them, and how they god through ordeals and how bad their situation is and because of that, I recommend it to anyone that wants to open their eyes to problems outside their community. This book is an eye opener for it shows how horrific the war is in Africa and how it effects the person, causing Ishmael to go from a young boy who loves rap music, into a killing machine while he works for the army as a boy soldier. It shows the terrors of war and that sometimes there is no happy ever after, exemplified when Ishmael never actually reunites with his father, mother and his brother, Junior. It talks about the experiences of being a boy soldier, which introduces Ishmael to the cruel side of the world, making him execute many people and introducing him to drugs. But it also shows of how he got out of the loop, becoming his innocent self once again, with the help of a nurse and UNICEF, and spreading his story to people all over the world to make sure something is done so that no child has to go through what he went through. From reading this book, I learned that life isn’t fair and that I should feel blessed for the childhood I have here in San Jose. People have it worse in other parts of the world, not even having enough resources to feed yourself, let alone your whole family. We’re not always under constant threat of having rebels come into our city and burning it to the ground here in San Jose, but in other parts of the world, children are growing up every day under these circumstances, living in constant fear that maybe tomorrow everything around them could gone. This book has shown me that San Jose isn’t the only city in the world and that there are other places that have it much worse, influencing me to be blessed for having a peaceful childhood, where the only fear I had was the monster under my bed, not the fear of wondering when the next meal would be. This book made me imagine brutal things, the vivid imagery of people dying gruesome deaths, blood spattering everywhere. Countless nights after reading this book I have had these images in my dreams, with the way that Ishmael describes the events burned into my head. I was given the feeling of devastation, being happy one minute and torn with grief the next, as if I was on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. This book drew me in, placing me as Ishmael in his experiences, making me feel as if I was the one facing all of these ordeals and truly experiencing what Ishmael had to go through. It made me feel a wide array of emotions, from heartbreak to joy, laughter to sadness. Throughout all these emotions, I couldn’t put this book down, piquing my interest with every word of the book. I’ve probably read a handful of books in my life, with this one being the one that opened my eyes to the problems of the world and taught me how to be blessed for and cherish everything I have.
What do You think about A Long Way Gone: Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier (2007)?
In the 1990s Sierra Leone, a small country in West Africa, found itself sinking into a very bloody internal war between corrupt government soldiers and armed rebels. It lasted at least ten years, and while now the country is stable and has a booming tourism industry, during the war countless innocent civilians were slaughtered and hundreds of boys were recruited by both sides.Ishmael is twelve when the rebels arrive at his small mining town in the south-west, not so far from the ocean. He is with his older brother, Junior, and their friends at a nearby town when the attack happens, and he is separated from his parents and younger brother, never to see them again. People are mowed down as they run, fleeing one town for another with the rebels not far behind. So begins a long journey for Ishmael as he tries to survive and stay alive. Food is hard to come by, and he has so many near-misses with death - not just at the hands of the rebels, but other villagers who are suspicious of him - that if this weren't a memoir you would never believe it. More than once, the tapes of American rap music save his life. Ironic, huh?He is recruited into the government's army, given an AK-47 and becomes addicted to several kinds of drugs, including cocaine, that the lieutenant hands out. He hardly sleeps, has loads of energy, and his migraines have stopped. He becomes a junior sergeant and leads his small unit of boys - some of these recruited boys are as young as 7 and can barely lift their guns - into laying ambushes and attacks on villages. At one point, he encounters a rebel group of boys just like his, and like all the other squirmishes it is a fight to the death.A Long Way Gone tells Ishmael's story, from the moment his home is destroyed, to being rehabilitated, representing other child soldiers at a UN conference and finally finding a new home in America. It is an interesting read on many levels. It is at the same time both simplistic and complex, distant and intense, coldly factual and emotionally harrowing. Throughout it all I kept reminding myself, "He's twelve"; "He's thirteen" and so on. Sometimes Bael's writing has the mature tone of a reflective adult, but generally the style is reminiscent of a report a 15-year-old might make for school. While this is a simplistic way to write anything, it could also be the only way he could write it. It is fact, not embellishment. He was deeply scarred and traumatised by all the things he'd seen and done during the war, and that's not something you can write fancifully about. It also renders it coldly brutal in its accuracy.Some people have complained that if it had delved into the political etc. situation, the circumstances behind the war, it would have been more interesting. I disagree, though it certainly made me curious about what was going on. This is not that type of memoir, and if that's what they were expecting then they have some very strange expectations of former child soldiers. On the contrary, this is the side of the war you usually don't get to see. It humanises it, in a way, and desensitises it. It's one thing to see this kind of thing on the telly, another to be pulled into a personal story as sad and frightening as this one. The very fact of the often unemotional writing (not dry or dull, but with a protective layer to shield the author) makes it all the more believable and heart-breaking.His speech at the UN conference brought tears to my eyes - not because it was poetic or profound or a great piece of oratory skill, but because it was straight-forward, from the mouth of a child who had lived through a kind of hell. His experiences didn't exactly make him older - not at first - but they certainly made him wild for a time. Bael doesn't dwell too much on his experiences as a soldier, it is more a balanced account of how he got into such a situation, what it did to him, and how he got out of it. Even then, he doesn't really explain how he shook off the mentality of a child soldier and became "rehabilitated". He also doesn't explain how he made it to America the second time - here I, perhaps suspiciously, feel US immigration wouldn't want that in a book; or maybe Bael just didn't feel it had any relevance. Still, I was taken rather by surprised when the story stopped. In short, A Long Way Gone is a powerful, visceral account of what happens when you give a scared but resourceful boy a big fucking gun and teach him how to kill people and be proud of it. It also shows with painful clarity the truly pointless aspects of this kind of war - of any war, true, but this kind especially, where those involved lose their sense of humanity and feel nothing for killing innocent bystanders, or burning people in their homes, or raping, looting and terrifying, all in the name of freeing the country from someone else doing exactly the same things. It makes no sense. It is hell on earth.
—Shannon (Giraffe Days)
Heartbreaking. I can't believe people have life experiences like Ishmael Beah. Ishmael, a 27 year-old refugee from Sierra Leone now living in New York City, left his home with his brother and some friends to practice a new rap routine in a neighboring village. He was twelve years old. He never saw his home or his parents again. Rebel forces attacked his village, killing most, and causing the rest to flee.Without a home to return to, he and his peers managed to spend several months wandering from village to village but eventually, as they were old enough to be mistaken as soldiers themselves, they became objects of fear. Left starving and hiding in the forests, Ishmael and his group were eventually captured and forced to become soldiers.A boy whose favorite thing was to perform rap songs for people was suddenly cutting throats and shooting anyone that moved. He became a drug addict, as higher ups encouraged the boys to swallow white capsules and sniff cocaine to "give them more energy".Years later, he was fortunate to be chosen by his lieutenant and UNICEF workers and was enrolled in a rehabilitation unit. It took him eight months to fight the drugs out of his system and to turn into a child again. His agony and nightmares about what he had done are intense. He was only fifteen years old.When the fighting moved from the villages into the city, Ishamel knew that he could not become a soldier again. Earlier in the year, after he had completed his rehabilitation, he traveled to New York to represent UNICEF and the youth in Sierre Leone at the UN. From this experience, he contacted one of the women he had met in New York to ask if she would be willing to allow him to stay with her if he could get out of his country. Amazingly, he managed, got to New York and has since graduated from the UN's International School and graduated from a university.What amazes me when I read books like this, because I don't really enjoy them, is how deplorable certain areas of our world really are. We are often told of the blessings we enjoy from living where we live: freedom, prosperity, security. We worry about losing zero percent interest for credit cards and avoiding trans fat, while other people in the world literally watch their best friends get blown up. Certainly our problems and worries are real, but when put into perspective, they are molehills compared to mountains.I'm grateful this boy got another chance. I'm horrified that most do not.
—Lucy
The long and the short of things is that this book is phenomonal. Incredible. Horrifying. Beautiful. It's written in a very straightforward manner; its rather simple and in most places lacks any type of real depth. However, the story that those words are telling is one that I will never forget.The story is set in Sierra Leone in the early 1990's. The author, Ishmael, is just a young boy of twelve when his village is attacked by rebel troops. Ishmael finds himself orphaned and on the run in a war torn country. It seems there are no real safe places to hide. By the age of thirteen Ishmael is picked up by the government army. Once a gentle young man, Beah finds himself becoming a killer. Hopped up on marijuana, speed and a local mixture of cocaine and gunpowder, he carries his AK-47 with pride and becomes one of the deadly killers he has spent the past year running from.This book encompasses it all. When we meet Ishmael he is living a normal childhood; fighting with his dad, hanging out with his friends. We follow him through the jungles as he flees from town to town. We're with him when he kills for the first time, when he tries drugs, when he slowly begins to lose his humanity and become a killing machine.Eventually Ishmael is removed from the war by UNICEF. He is placed in a rehabilitation home with other young boy soldiers like himself. We're with him as he experiences withdrawalls from the drugs, as he faces the things he has done, as he comes to terms with his guilt and sorrow, and as he finds himself on the run...yet again.It's a brutally honest and raw story. In the more than fifty violent conflicts worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. These children are traumatized, addicted to drugs and turned into killers. In today's world, children have become the soldiers of choice. It's a sad truth, and its something that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should. This book, is a first hand account, told by a former child soldier, and should be a mandatory read for everyone. Ishmael Beah is now 27 years old and resides in New York City. His book is a huge contribution to the literary world. Everyone needs to read it. Be prepared to be horrified though, its not for the weak of heart.
—Bethany Andrews
