Missions Resources - Bibliography
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Authors: Ishmael Beah
ISBN: 978-0374105235
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number of pages: 240
Type of cover: Soft Cover
Summary:
Eight-year-old Ishmael Beah runs, laughs and plays with his friends and brothers in a small village in Sierra Leone. He falls in love with American rap and with three age-mates, forms a hip-hop dance group. Four years later, they head for a nearby village for a dance competition. Before they reach the village, a group of people arrive, fleeing his hometown.
The rumors of war and massacre can no longer be dismissed. The rebels have struck, and they are coming his way. Soon, he and his 12-year-old companions are on the run, separated from family and all that is familiar.
In his matter-of-fact style, Ishmael takes us with him into the forest and into the life of a child-soldier. Through his eyes we see and experience unspeakable horrors, juxtaposed with remnants of the child in him. Sometimes the reader may succumb to the temptation to turn away, as this one did. Then, just as matter-of-factly, we see him walk into liberation – a school, new friends, reunions, a new family, an amazing trip. Yet more challenges await him.
Beah, ten years on, is a master storyteller. His rich descriptions do not overwhelm, but rather carry the reader along. The reason to read on lies in the fact that Ishmael’s story is still being repeated today.
I once met a school teacher from Sierra Leone who had walked her three children eighty miles to the Liberian border to escape the rebels. A Long Way Gone told me what she did not, could not, tell me herself.
Why read this book in the first place? A Long Way Gone enables the reader to begin to comprehend the devastation faced by children all over the world who are wielding guns instead of playing, laughing and dancing. It inspires the reader to decide, perhaps to pray, to act, to lobby, to work against the loss of even one more Ishmael.
by Cyd Miller
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