Title
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Author
Ishmael Beah
Date of Publication
2008
Reason for reading
A general interest in foreign cultures & current events.
Synopsis
The book is the story of a young boy, age ~13 (at the start, but through when he was about 18 at the end) in Sierra Leone during the civil war in the early 1990's. The first half of the book is mostly his separation from his family and wandering through the country, either alone or with a groups of other boys. Around the middle he is recruited/forced into fighting for the army against the rebels. I'd say about a quarter of the book is spent on this time, which focuses on the troop of mostly boys raiding villages and killing everyone they can, doing drugs, and watching war movies. Then the last quarter is when they are rescued by UNICEF, rehabilitated, and eventually repatriated to an uncle whom he'd never met before.
Review
I'm not sure exactly where to rate this book. When I was about halfway through it, I looked it up on wikipedia just to see some more information on the author & Sierra Leone. While I was reading about the book, I saw that many people had questioned its veracity, and a few questions were never answered. Noteworthy among these are the fact that the boy's original village was raided two years after he claimed, meaning he could have only spent a few months as a soldier rather than a couple years, and that an event at the UNICEF camp in the book (in which 6 people were killed) had not made the news at the time and UNICEF could not confirm. Additionally, an expert on children & war said that while most of the things likely happened to children in Sierra Leone, it's unlikely they all happened to one child. So it's kind of a mixed bag in which the events are all entirely plausible and so it does give the reader a better view of the role children may play in wars in Africa and elsewhere, but may not be entirely true as depicted. In that case, it's hard to know what to believe, and so the second half of the book I felt myself kind of questioning the book the whole time.
On Amazon there is at least a page of books that come up when searching for "child soldier" so if I were to recommend on that topic, I might read up on some others to see if there are any books that have been deemed more credible.
Quotes
I listened to this on audiobook, so I wasn't able to flag interesting quotes. I don't really remember any statements really jumping out at me, moreso the situations the boy encountered, such as the general distrust older people put on children once the war began due to their use as soldiers. In the book, at least 2-3 villages were extremely vigilant towards the children out of fear they were soldiers before they actually were.
Further Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Long_Way_Gone
http://www.alongwaygone.com/
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Author
Ishmael Beah
Date of Publication
2008
Reason for reading
A general interest in foreign cultures & current events.
Synopsis
The book is the story of a young boy, age ~13 (at the start, but through when he was about 18 at the end) in Sierra Leone during the civil war in the early 1990's. The first half of the book is mostly his separation from his family and wandering through the country, either alone or with a groups of other boys. Around the middle he is recruited/forced into fighting for the army against the rebels. I'd say about a quarter of the book is spent on this time, which focuses on the troop of mostly boys raiding villages and killing everyone they can, doing drugs, and watching war movies. Then the last quarter is when they are rescued by UNICEF, rehabilitated, and eventually repatriated to an uncle whom he'd never met before.
Review
I'm not sure exactly where to rate this book. When I was about halfway through it, I looked it up on wikipedia just to see some more information on the author & Sierra Leone. While I was reading about the book, I saw that many people had questioned its veracity, and a few questions were never answered. Noteworthy among these are the fact that the boy's original village was raided two years after he claimed, meaning he could have only spent a few months as a soldier rather than a couple years, and that an event at the UNICEF camp in the book (in which 6 people were killed) had not made the news at the time and UNICEF could not confirm. Additionally, an expert on children & war said that while most of the things likely happened to children in Sierra Leone, it's unlikely they all happened to one child. So it's kind of a mixed bag in which the events are all entirely plausible and so it does give the reader a better view of the role children may play in wars in Africa and elsewhere, but may not be entirely true as depicted. In that case, it's hard to know what to believe, and so the second half of the book I felt myself kind of questioning the book the whole time.
On Amazon there is at least a page of books that come up when searching for "child soldier" so if I were to recommend on that topic, I might read up on some others to see if there are any books that have been deemed more credible.
Quotes
I listened to this on audiobook, so I wasn't able to flag interesting quotes. I don't really remember any statements really jumping out at me, moreso the situations the boy encountered, such as the general distrust older people put on children once the war began due to their use as soldiers. In the book, at least 2-3 villages were extremely vigilant towards the children out of fear they were soldiers before they actually were.
Further Reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Long_Way_Gone
http://www.alongwaygone.com/
Posts
I remember seeing this guy on Daily Show some time ago.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-february-14-2007/ishmael-beah