Goodreads | A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

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Milan/zzz rated it:

06/06/08

New York City, 1998
My high school friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
- “Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
- “Because there is a war.”
- “Did you witness some of the fighting?”
- “Everyone in the country did.”
- “You mean you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”
- “Yes, all the time.”
- “Cool.”
I smile a little.
- “You should tell us about it sometime.”
- “Yes, sometime.”

This is how begin...more

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Shannon rated it:

02/14/08

bookshelves: 2008, history, memoir, non-fiction

Read in February, 2008

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...more 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 coldy 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.
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Kevin rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

08/05/07

Read in June, 2007

Perhaps Starbucks should stick to what it knows: coffee. Having gone into a local Starbucks for a regular cup of their coffee, I was intrigued by a book recommendation on the counter where I was placing my order. Having seen CDs and pound cake there before, I was surprised to see a pile of books on the same counter. The book had a flashy cover and a title that simply couldn't jog the imagination. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier read the title along with a staff recommendation to custom...more Perhaps Starbucks should stick to what it knows: coffee. Having gone into a local Starbucks for a regular cup of their coffee, I was intrigued by a book recommendation on the counter where I was placing my order. Having seen CDs and pound cake there before, I was surprised to see a pile of books on the same counter. The book had a flashy cover and a title that simply couldn't jog the imagination. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier read the title along with a staff recommendation to customers that the book would pair nicely with whatever coffee beverage the customer might have been buying.

Written by Ishmael Beah, a now grown man that fought in his childhood as a boy soldier in his native Sierra Leone, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier holds the readers attention from a global perspective, but other than that, it seems rather bland and uninteresting. What I mean by a global perspective is that it opened this American’s eyes to some of the more intricate details of the civil war taking place in Sierra Leone, but the memoir section of the book I could have lived without. Had the book focused more on some of the reasons behind the strife in Sierra Leone, perhaps I would have closed the book with a more favorable impression in mind.

The book walks the reader through the progression of Beah’s life in the forests of Sierra Leone. Much of the book focuses on the friendships that Beah is able to form with some of the other boy soldiers that he is fighting with. The story outlines friendship amongst the boys that come from a world of having nothing and are simply placed into a position of picking up a weapon to fight for a warlord who brainwashes them at the hands of free guns, drugs and a false sense of glory.

The travesties that Beah and his companion boy soldiers along with other soldiers commit against the towns and townspeople that they encounter as they cross the country side are remarkable. However, what I found even more remarkable is that Beah writes about the nightmares he has about the acts he committed but makes no real reference to why he feels any different today than he did when he committed the atrocities.

The book finally picks up some momentum about two-thirds of the way through the book when Beah and some of the other boy soldiers are brought to a camp established to help attempt to rehabilitate the boys from blood thirsty warriors into something more civilized and humane.

The book ends with Beah outlining how he was given the opportunity to come to America to speak with the United Nations and sub-councils relative to children and war and his unique individual experience within Sierra Leone. Though it addresses superficially some of the stories he was able to share with children from other parts of the world relative to their wartime experiences, the section is rather sparse in terms of any real meaning or discussions.

It would have been far better to have had perhaps a more personal reconciliation or reflection by Beah in terms of his past and perhaps even a bit of a foreshadowing of what is to come with Beah's life. The story seems to be intent on talking about the killing, the blood, the smoking of marijuana and snorting of brown-brown (a mixture of gunpowder and cocaine), yet the story does not seem to have enough personal reflection from Beah to give the book a personal touch.

The writing in the book is also very choppy at times which adds to the poor perception of the book that I have. There are also plenty of times within the book that the topics jump around too much and/or leave the reader simply wondering what else might have happened in a particular section.
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Donna rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

01/13/08

bookshelves: expanding-horizons, memoir, sierra-leone

Read in January, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

A powerful and ultimately very upsetting read, and a story that desperately needs to be told. A small part of me wants to believe that this can’t possibly be true; a much larger part of me knows that it is true, and is dreadfully afraid for the future of a human race that can produce men capable of such atrocities. Ishmael’s story begins in 1993 in Sierra Leone in the midst of civil and political chaos as a military coup, a deposed government, and a rebel force clash in efforts to gain contr...more A powerful and ultimately very upsetting read, and a story that desperately needs to be told. A small part of me wants to believe that this can’t possibly be true; a much larger part of me knows that it is true, and is dreadfully afraid for the future of a human race that can produce men capable of such atrocities. Ishmael’s story begins in 1993 in Sierra Leone in the midst of civil and political chaos as a military coup, a deposed government, and a rebel force clash in efforts to gain control of the country. Beah does an amazing job of helping us to understand exactly what it is like to live, as children, in the midst of a violent and inhuman civil war.

Beah is not a particularly polished writer, but he is definitely a gifted storyteller. I was reminded of the days I spent in Malawi in 1997. In my mind’s eye, I could easily picture the author seated at a waning campfire on a brightly lit night in the distant savannahs of Africa, telling his story to an assembled enrapt group of villagers:

“ ‘We must strive to be like the moon.’ An old man in Kabati repeated this sentence often to people who walked past his house on their way to the river to fetch water, to hunt, to tap palm wine; and to their farms. I remember asking my grandmother what the old man meant. She explained that the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behaviour and to be good to others. She said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, and also when it rains too much or when it is cold. But, she said, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some of the reasons why we should want to be like the moon.” [p. 16:]

* * * * *

W A R N I N G - - - S P O I L E R S

Ishmael’s family is killed, and he finds himself living alone in the jungle, gathering what food he can, making do with what he can find. He is only 12 years old. But he is discovered by the rebel fighters, trained to fight, and brainwashed into a daily round of weapons, killing, mind-altering drugs, and continuous exposure to levels of violence that you and I cannot possibly imagine. In the process he begins a descent into madness that feels very much like the loss of anything resembling humanity, or indeed reality:

“I am pushing a rusty wheelbarrow in a town where the air smells of blood and burnt flesh. The breeze brings the faint cries of those whose last breaths are leaving their mangled bodies. I walk past them. Their arms and legs are missing; their intestines spill out through the bullet holes in their stomachs; brain matter comes out of their noses and ears. The flies are so excited and intoxicated that they fall on the pools of blood and die. The eyes of the nearly dead are redder than the blood that comes out of them, and it seems that their bones will tear through the skin of their taut faces at any minute….The wheelbarrow in front of me contains a dead body wrapped in white bedsheets. I do not know why I am taking this particular body to the cemetery.” [p. 18:]

In a strangely twisted and disturbing way, the rebel force becomes his new family. He makes friends among the other boys, and is looked up to as a particularly fierce fighter. The commander calls him “The Snake” because he is small enough to hide in the shrubs and skilled enough to attack without warning and kill many without being discovered.

I fear for the future of postcolonial Africa, as rebel factions in so many countries continue to fight against democratic governments, and democratically elected governments continue to siphon off all of the wealth of their nations into offshore bank accounts while the people starve, suffer, and die.

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James rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

03/01/08

Read in November, 2007

I finally got around to reading the highly lauded A Long Way Gone.

“Africa breaks your heart.” That’s what David Denby of The New Yorker concluded at the very beginning of his review for “Blood Diamond,” drawing on the then recent releases of “Hotel Rwanda,” “The Constant Gardener,” “And The Last King of Scotland.”

I concur, having read Ishmael Beah’s memoir relatively close on the heels of Dave Eggers’ What is the What and Beasts of No Nation. I suppose I could compl...more I finally got around to reading the highly lauded A Long Way Gone.

“Africa breaks your heart.” That’s what David Denby of The New Yorker concluded at the very beginning of his review for “Blood Diamond,” drawing on the then recent releases of “Hotel Rwanda,” “The Constant Gardener,” “And The Last King of Scotland.”

I concur, having read Ishmael Beah’s memoir relatively close on the heels of Dave Eggers’ What is the What and Beasts of No Nation. I suppose I could complete the cycle with This Voice in My Heart, and The Devil Came on Horseback, among others, but my heart is already fragile enough.

Beah’s book of tragic descent into war as a 12-year-old is striking for many reasons on several levels. It seems to be placed somewhere between Keroauc’s “On the Road” and McCarthy’s “The Road.” It illuminates an unsettling postmodern world highly influenced by drugs and western war movies. It is a road novel, but very much more about coming of age and a loss of innocence in a demented, perverse, unfortunate, shameful (I can’t stop!) modern world.

Reminiscent of the scene in Jarhead when the marines whoop and holler to Apocalypse Now, Beah relates that, “We watched movies at night. War movies, Rambo: First Blood, Rambo II, Comando, and so on, with the aid of a generator or sometimes a car battery. We all wanted to be like Rambo; we couldn’t wait to implement his techniques. When we ran out of food, drugs, ammunition, and gasoline to watch war films, we raided rebel camps, in towns, villages, and forests. We also attacked civilian villages to capture recruits and whatever else we could find.”

Beah’s prose is dominated by plain and simple descriptive language, a style that portrays one of the story’s more interesting elements: the amazing ability of people to quickly adapt. It is truly an admirable quality for a usually deficient species: “Oh. We’re being raided. Our way of life that we’ve known for years is over and our entire family is dead. We better move on.” Survival. It is captivating. Especially the way Beah shares it. He does so with simple eloquence and an appropriate and refreshing lack of sentimentality and drama that does not betray any severity and immediacy. Whereas Beasts of no Nation has a very stylized voice to accompany the similarly frenzied content, and What is the What takes a more straightforward collage-combining-Memphis Belle-esque everything goes into it approach, Long Way Gone has a very simple narrative voice and structure that realistically compliments the haunting, intense events portrayed. While this approach is abrupt, disjointed, and rough around the edges at times, it rings as absolutely authentic.

As in What is the What and Beasts of No Nation, Beah’s story is impressive in how it raises the stakes. Just when you, the reader, think things have gotten so bad that they couldn’t possibly get any worse, they do.

And it breaks your heart. All over again....less

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steven rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

02/02/08

Read in February, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

The review for this one is a toss-up between one and five stars. It was an amazing story of how a twelve-year-old boy survived the armed conflicts in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. It's well-written, provides vivid imagery, and evokes the horrors of war.

The one star is because of the vivid imagery. Let's be perfectly clear about this: people die in this book. Blood spatters everywhere, usually blood that should be kept inside some of the narrator's closest friends. From the very first page to th...more The review for this one is a toss-up between one and five stars. It was an amazing story of how a twelve-year-old boy survived the armed conflicts in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. It's well-written, provides vivid imagery, and evokes the horrors of war.

The one star is because of the vivid imagery. Let's be perfectly clear about this: people die in this book. Blood spatters everywhere, usually blood that should be kept inside some of the narrator's closest friends. From the very first page to the very last, you are kept on a rollercoaster ride of emotion, happy one minute and torn with grief the next, until you and the narrator have both attained a kind of wariness to happiness since you know it won't last. There's a constant suspense of waiting for the other shoe to drop, and when it does it hits the ground like a ten-ton hammer.

This book is disturbing. It's a good read, but I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone who has trouble sleeping; this wont' help at all. Every once in a while my mind will flit to one of the scenes in the book, and I'll wince; it's like I'm having minor flashbacks of things that *never happened to me*. The writing is just that evocative and heart-wrenching.

When I was done reading it -- and I wouldn't have picked it up at all, knowing the subject matter, if it wasn't assigned for a class -- I threw it aside. I'm going to do my best to remember only the general overarching story, and to forget the specific details of the hardship.

An overview, so that you don't have to read it if you don't want to: Sierra Leone has been war-torn since the discovery of the diamond mines in the 1960s; in the 90s things really hit the fan. Children as young as seven were pressed into military service, hopped up on cocaine and other various drugs, and sent out to kill. This happened on both sides of the war; the rebels and the "formal" army. Civilians merely provided a target-rich environment, their villages good only for forceful resupply of ammunition and food. The narrator's village is attacked, and he and a couple of his friends manage to escape and wander the country, moving from village to village. They can never settle down, because everyone is wary of children, worried that they may be brainwashed militants. Eventually, after much hardship and losing his friends to gunfire, the narrator is "trained" as a soldier and sent out to fight. Only through the intervention of UNICEF was he given an opportunity to be rehabilitated and managed to regain some semblance of a normal life, but there could be no hope of that lasting while he lived in Sierra Leone. So he escaped to New York, where he's been more or less living ever since....less

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Becky rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

08/19/08

bookshelves: adultbooks, nonfiction

Read in August, 2008

recommended to Becky by: Otterbein Common Book 2008-2009

Reading it with a middle school service club at Otterbein. Halfway through. I know it's going to get worse before it gets better. I feel both very lucky and very whiny about my own life.

Finally finished it; this one took a while. One thing I kept doing while reading was turning the book over to look at the author's picture on the back, in which he is smiling so joyously. He is the exact same age as me.

The way nature and the environment represented/reflected emotion in this book was amaz...more Reading it with a middle school service club at Otterbein. Halfway through. I know it's going to get worse before it gets better. I feel both very lucky and very whiny about my own life.

Finally finished it; this one took a while. One thing I kept doing while reading was turning the book over to look at the author's picture on the back, in which he is smiling so joyously. He is the exact same age as me.

The way nature and the environment represented/reflected emotion in this book was amazing to me. I found myself thinking a lot about any book I had read that took place in Africa, from "Heart of Darkness" to "The Poisonwood Bible" to "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." Because I've never been there, my mental image is shaped solely by these books.

I will also remember how many times rap music saved Ishmael; the lietenant who quoted Shakespeare; the psychological torture that results from having no aim in life; and the actions of the boys who were first rescued and brought to Benin House.

Favorite quotes **possible spoilers**:

"'We must strive to be like the moon.' ...I remember asking my grandmother what the old man meant. She explained that the adage served to remind people to always be on their best behavior and to be good to others. She said that people complain when there is too much sun and it gets unbearably hot, and also when it rains too much or when it is cold. But, she said, no one grumbles when the moon shines. Everyone becomes happy and appreciates the moon in their own special way. Children watch their shadows and play in its light, people gather at the square to tell stories and dance through the night. A lot of happy things happen when the moon shines. These are some of the reasons why we should want to be like the moon."

"'Every time people come at us with the intention of killing us, I close my eyes and wait for death. Even though I am still alive, I feel like each time I accept death, part of me dies. Very soon I will completely die and all that will be left is my empty body walking with you. It will be quieter than I am.'"

"The war memories had formed a barrier that I had to break in order to think about any moment in my life before the war."

"I would always tell people that I believe children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance."

"...I didn't know what to do in my happy state. I was still hesitant to let myself go, because I still believed in the fragility of happiness."

"Gradually I adjusted to being around people who were happy all the time."

"But on the first day of school in Freetown, all the students sat apart from us, as if Mohamed and I were going to snap any minute and kill someone. Somehow they had learned that we had been child soldiers. We had not only lost our childhood in the war but our lives had been tainted by the same experiences that still caused us great pain and sadness."
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Abigail rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

09/29/07

bookshelves: africa, biography-memoir, human-rights, war

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: Students of African History, Human Beings interested in Human Rights

By turns disheartening and uplifting, this memoir of a young man who was caught up in Sierra Leone's civil war was recommended to me by my college roommate and dear friend Menna. Beah attended Oberlin with us, and although I didn't know him personally, he and Menna were friends through their involvement in the African Students Union.

This heartbreaking work follows Beah from the idyllic days of his childhood, through the horrors of war, to his eventual escape to the United States. Separated f...more By turns disheartening and uplifting, this memoir of a young man who was caught up in Sierra Leone's civil war was recommended to me by my college roommate and dear friend Menna. Beah attended Oberlin with us, and although I didn't know him personally, he and Menna were friends through their involvement in the African Students Union.

This heartbreaking work follows Beah from the idyllic days of his childhood, through the horrors of war, to his eventual escape to the United States. Separated from his family when the fighting between rebels and government forces reached his home in the southeastern part of the country, twelve-year-old Beah found himself part of a wandering group of displaced young boys. The hunger they suffered, the hardships endured, and the terrible bloodshed they witnessed, are described in graphic detail. Eventually recruited into the government army, Beah became an active participant in those horrors at a very young age, drugged and programmed to kill by the adults in charge. Salvation came in his selection for a camp with a program specifically designed to rehabilitate child soldiers, and when the war eventually reached his new place of safety, he was forced to flee the country altogether...

As a personal memoir, "A Long Way Gone" is powerful and moving. I am forced to disagree with some of the reviewers who take Beah to task for not giving more background on Sierra Leone and its civil war. While I too would like to be better informed, this book accomplishes what it sets out to do: it shows us what it feels like to be a child in a world suddenly and inexplicably descending into madness, to be helpless in the grip of forces well beyond our control. This story of one human being's suffering was emotionally powerful stuff, but it also prompted me to think about the larger issues, not of Sierra Leone, but of human nature and culture. It demonstrates how fragile our humanity can be, how easy to subvert when our ties to family and home have been violently severed. But it also demonstrates the resilience of the human spirit, how those who have both witnessed and participated in terrible acts are NOT forever lost and broken - that many of them can be found and restored again, if we but had the will and resources to effect it......less

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Chris rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

02/09/08

bookshelves: current-events, history, top-shelf

Read in June, 2007

I will never. Never. Complain about my childhood again.

Okay, that's not true. I will. But when I let out a sad sigh of remorse that I didn't figure out exactly why I really wanted to be friends with that one guy in band in high school until it was way too late to do anything about it, I will at least think, "At least I wasn't killing people and snorting gunpowder."

Like most of you reading this, I knew absolutely nothing about what was happening in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. I d...more I will never. Never. Complain about my childhood again.

Okay, that's not true. I will. But when I let out a sad sigh of remorse that I didn't figure out exactly why I really wanted to be friends with that one guy in band in high school until it was way too late to do anything about it, I will at least think, "At least I wasn't killing people and snorting gunpowder."

Like most of you reading this, I knew absolutely nothing about what was happening in Sierra Leone in the 1990s. I didn't know there was anything to know. For all I knew, we had fixed Africa back in '84 when the First World Lonely Hearts Club Band belted out "We Are The World" and made us all notice the famine in Ethiopia. And anyway, that was in east Africa. West Africa was supposed to be a little better organized.

Shows how much I knew. Turns out all hell was breaking loose. After more than a decade of one-party rule, the Sierra Leonean military got into power and behaved pretty much the same way most African military governments did. Badly.

In reaction, a rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) started rampaging through the country. Their initial cause was to get rid of a corrupt government, but they very quickly went corrupt themselves, burning and slaughtering as they went. The rebels were vicious and bloodthirsty, and one of their most common ways of recruiting was to murder men and woman en masse and bring their sons into the fold. They would manipulate them with fear and drugs and hate, turning boys of ten, eleven, twelve years old into murderers.

Ishmael Beah was on the other end of this. His family was killed when the RUF ran over his town, along with most of his friends. He and his schoolmates tried to run away, but were eventually ensnared by the army. The army of Sierra Leone were hard-pressed to fight the rebels, and needed recruits. So they would take in boys who had been left orphaned and rootless by the war and hook them on fear and drugs and hate, turning boys of ten, eleven, twelve years old into murderers.

Hmmm....

This is the story of Beah's descent into horror and his successful return from it. He was one of way too many child soldiers in Africa, and probably one of the very few who came through his experience not only intact, but willing to write about it. I first saw him on The Daily Show, and honestly it is really tough to reconcile what you read in this book with the bright-eyed, smiling young man sitting across from Jon Stewart.

Thanks to Dad, for the birthday present.... *smile*...less

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Bethany rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

09/24/07

bookshelves: memoir, multi-culturallit, nonfiction

Read in September, 2007

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 r...more 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.

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Danna rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

03/21/08

Read in March, 2008

It's taken me a while to define my reactions to this book clearly enough to write them down. I read another member's comments, and in analyzing my response to his review, I'm finally able to articulate my own.

Goodreads member 'Kevin' had these things to say:

"... what I found even more remarkable is that Beah writes about the nightmares he has about the acts he committed but makes no real reference to why he feels any different today than he did when he committed the atrocities.&quo...more It's taken me a while to define my reactions to this book clearly enough to write them down. I read another member's comments, and in analyzing my response to his review, I'm finally able to articulate my own.

Goodreads member 'Kevin' had these things to say:

"... what I found even more remarkable is that Beah writes about the nightmares he has about the acts he committed but makes no real reference to why he feels any different today than he did when he committed the atrocities."
"The book ends with Beah outlining how he was given the opportunity to come to America to speak with the United Nations... Though it addresses superficially some of the stories he was able to share..., the section is rather sparse in terms of any real meaning or discussions."
"It would have been far better to have had perhaps a more personal reconciliation or reflection by Beah in terms of his past and perhaps even a bit of a foreshadowing of what is to come with Beah's life...the story does not seem to have enough personal reflection from Beah to give the book a personal touch."
"The writing in the book is also very choppy at times... topics jump around too much and/or leave the reader simply wondering what else might have happened in a particular section."

I think I can understand why that reader had those impressions; if I had assumed it was written for an adult audience, I would also have expected more depth, introspection, and discussion of both the specific details and broader implications of the situation. I did not have those same expectations, however, for two reasons.

First, this book was written for a young adult audience and I recognized the sparse and sometimes halting manner of storytelling to be a common style when presenting first-person accounts of such circumstances. The intent of the author, I thought, was to simply present the experience in such a way that others can empathize and reach some level of comprehension of the reality of life in those circumstances. The next level of analysis can then have greater meaning and context (and this is one of the reasons why adults can and do enjoy young adult literature, too).

Next, I was actually quite moved by the dispassionate way the story was told. To me that felt very personal because it seemed he was still very early in the healing process and needed to maintain a sense of distance from the situation.

Another reason I love the Goodreads! It's fascinating to see how many different reactions that one book can inspire....less

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Lucy rated it:

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03/03/08

Read in March, 2008

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 ...more 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....less

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Alex rated it:

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10/24/07

Like Jesus on t-shirts, Che prints on panties, dead rappers, and Darfur doo-rags...tragedy, martyrdom, and atrocities have all become fashionable. It isn't rare that I find someone trading stories (with great excitement) about a friend of a friend who was in Indonesia during the tsunami, or meet an artist eager to proclaim that he lost everything in New Orleans. Surely, a life of meaning must have been filled with unbelievable obstacles. If you spit lyrics, you must have bit the bullet (liter...more

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Kristine rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

08/18/07

Read in July, 2007

Good book- short, simple, he describes his experience as a child soldier. Pretty amazing, bc you figure not that many of those child soldiers have the opportunity or inkling to write about it. I do wish the book had a clearer timeline and sense of the history and politics surrounding his personal experience in the conflict, but hey- the guy is not a historian, so I am not gonna bitch about that.

The topic of the Sierra Leone conflict though is FASCINATING, not to mention disgusting when you...more Good book- short, simple, he describes his experience as a child soldier. Pretty amazing, bc you figure not that many of those child soldiers have the opportunity or inkling to write about it. I do wish the book had a clearer timeline and sense of the history and politics surrounding his personal experience in the conflict, but hey- the guy is not a historian, so I am not gonna bitch about that.

The topic of the Sierra Leone conflict though is FASCINATING, not to mention disgusting when you see what forces caused it, and I've been seeing the subject around a lot recently:
- the documentary "Refugee All-Stars" which I review below
-this book
-the movie Blood Diamond with Leo DeCaprio and (horrible) Jennifer Connelly, both of their weird accents totally annoying me
-the documentary "Diamond Road" on National Geographic, which was actually too sad and depressing for me to watch.

Unlike the concise yet powerful "Refugee All-Stars," the Diamond Road series was 3 parts, 2 hours each, covering the Diamond Industry from start to finish, the start being the diamond mines of Sierra Leone, and the end being the industry's attempts to make themselves not look like criminals who take diamonds out of a country whose citizens are among the poorest in the world.

Movie Review of "Refugee All Stars"

I wasn't excited "Long Way Gone" until I realized it was about the same country as this freakin AMAZING documentary I just saw on POV about refugees from Sierra Leone. It's called "Refugee All-Stars" and it's about 6 or 7 refugees from S.L. forming a band in the refugee camp in neighboring Guinea.

It's hard to capture what this documentary does in a mere three hours, hard to believe that I could feel so much for these people after such a short time. And, it's not one of those "bawl your eyes out I feel so sorry for these people things" where you leave just feeling BAD. Although I do feel bad, that's not what the story evokes- it evokes the power of the human spirit, the drive to make something positive out of a horrible situation and horrible memories, and the power of music.
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Andrew rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

08/23/08

Read in August, 2008

recommends it for: Anyone

A Long Way Gone is one of the most touching books I have read in a long time. It has been a week since I have finished, and I still think about it everyday. It is the autobiographical tale of Ishmael Beah, of Sierra Leone. And it tells of his horrific young life, caught in the vicious cycle of war.

His life starts off peacefully enough, living with his family in the countryside of Sierra Leone, intrigued with rap music and dance, he and his friends are high spirited kids. When he was 11 years...more A Long Way Gone is one of the most touching books I have read in a long time. It has been a week since I have finished, and I still think about it everyday. It is the autobiographical tale of Ishmael Beah, of Sierra Leone. And it tells of his horrific young life, caught in the vicious cycle of war.

His life starts off peacefully enough, living with his family in the countryside of Sierra Leone, intrigued with rap music and dance, he and his friends are high spirited kids. When he was 11 years old, all that changed as rebels fighting to topple the government in Sierra Leone, destroyed his village, scattered his family and sent him, with his young friends, on the run to somewhere, anywhere that was safe.

But there were few places that were safe for him. And those did not stay safe for long. Finally in one village he thought he had found safety, but the rebels attack again, and he is recruited into the army to fight the rebels that killed his family. Using simple brainwashing techniques and ample drugs, the army turn this 13 year old boy into a ruthless killer.

Beah is finally taken out of the army by UNICEF and the UN. But his story does not end there. His rehabilitation and the continued civil war in Sierra Leone continue his journey, and his ultimate redemption.

Beah tells his story, not sparing the details of his own actions. It is told in a voice that must keep some distance and objectively, but also allows us to see with his eyes how it all looked, and more importantly, how it all felt to this young teenager. It is prose that is spare, but despite (or maybe because of) that, makes us feel the otherworldliness of what was happening to this child, and thousands of others like him.

This book is devastating. It makes us all responsible. It makes us see what war does to a country, not to the professional military, but to the people. There is little noble about war, especially when it comes into contact with children. Death and destruction are its output. If not of the body, then of the psyche. That Ishmael Beah was able to retain his life, and regain his mind, and have the fortitude to write about it---that is a minor miracle. ...less

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Chelsea rated it:

(review of isbn 0374105235)

05/27/07

It was one of the more incredible books I've ever read. The book is the true story of the author's life in Sierra-Leone, and the story of many other children swept up in the war there. When the author is 12-years-old his village is destroyed and his family lost. He wanders for years, sometimes with groups of other boys, sometimes alone, trying to avoid the rebels and to find a safe place to exist. Eventually swept into the war, hopped up on drugs and handed guns, the boys find themselves so...more

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

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