Ishmael Beah. (2007). A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Ishmael Beah. 2007. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Ishmael Beah. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

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1. • value: autobiographies
2. • value: personal narrative
3. • value: Sierra Leone
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5. • value: Memoirs
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7. • value: Personal narratives
8. • value: child soldiers
9. • value: christmas gifts
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11. • value: best autobiographies
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14. • value: books memoirs
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17. • value: child soldiers in africa
18. • value: sierra leone books
19. • value: christmas stocking stuffer ideas

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Beah, Ishmael
   • bioText: Ishmael Beah, born in 1980 in Sierra Leone, West Africa, is the New York Times bestselling author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. The book has been published in over thirty languages and was nominated for a Quill Award in 2007. Time magazine named the book as one of the top ten nonfiction books of 2007, ranking it at number three. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vespertine Press, LIT, Parabola, and numerous academic journals. He is a UNICEF Ambassador and Advocate for Children Affected by War; a member of the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Advisory Committee; an advisory board member at the Center for the Study of Youth and Political Violence at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; visiting scholar at the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University; visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights at Rutgers University; cofounder of the Network of Young People Affected by War (NYPAW); and president of the Ishmael Beah Foundation. He has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and many panels on the effects of war on children. He is a graduate of Oberlin College with a B.A. in Political Science and resides in Brooklyn, New York.
   • name: Ishmael Beah

imprint

Sarah Crichton Books

publishDate

2007-04-01T00:00:00-04:00

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title

A Long Way Gone

fullDescription

In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story in his own words: 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.
My new 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."
"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 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.
This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

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1. • value: Grade 4
2. • value: Grade 5

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Time Magazine
   • content:

     "A breathtaking and unselfpitying account of how a gentle spirit survives a childhood from which all innocence has suddenly been sucked out. It's a truly riveting memoir."

2. • premium: False
   • source: Newsweek.com
   • content: "Beah is a gifted writer. . . Read his memoir and you will be haunted . . . It's a high price to pay, but it's worth it."
3. • premium: False
   • source: People Magazine
   • content: "Deeply moving, even uplifting...Beah's story, with its clear-eyed reporting and literate particularity--whether he's dancing to rap, eating a coconut or running toward the burning village where his family is trapped--demands to be read. (Critic's Choice, Four stars)"
4. • premium: False
   • source: Melissa Fay Greene, Elle Magazine
   • content: "Beah's memoir, A Long Way Gone (Farrar, Straus and ­Giroux), is unforgettable testimony that Africa's children--millions of them dying and orphaned by preventable diseases, hundreds of thousands of them forced into battle--have eyes to see and voices to tell what has happened. And what voices!"
5. • premium: False
   • source: Christian Science Monitor
   • content: "When Beah is finally approached about the possibility of serving as a spokesperson on the issue of child soldiers, he knows exactly what he wants to tell the world: "I would always tell people that I believe children have the resilience to outlive their sufferings, if given a chance. Others may make the same assertions, but Beah has the advantage of stating them in the first person. That makes A Long Way Gone all the more gripping."
6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from December 18, 2006
     This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army—in a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he's brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs. The process marks out Beah as a gifted spokesman for the center's work after his "repatriation" to civilian life in the capital, where he lives with his family and a distant uncle. When the war finally engulfs the capital, it sends 17-year-old Beah fleeing again, this time to the U.S., where he now lives. (Beah graduated from Oberlin College in 2004.) Told in clear, accessible language by a young writer with a gifted literary voice, this memoir seems destined to become a classic firsthand account of war and the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts worldwide.

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     Starred review from March 1, 2007
     Rarely does one encounter anything but outrage, sadness, and pain when reading about the exploitation of child soldiers, but Beah's account also offers hope, humility, bravery, and, yes, peace. Beah was 13 years old when rebels attacked nearby villages in his native Sierra Leone. He was separated from his family (he learned later that they perished) and was on the run from both the rebels and the Sierra Leone Military Forces for over a year. Eventually captured by the military, which could behave as horrendously as the rebels, the boy was forced to join the army, carrying guns or grenade launchers. Like the thousands of other children traumatized by these events, Beah needed rehabilitation when his "tour of duty" was over. A former juvenile center turned counseling house afforded him a safe haven. After being chosen to speak at a UN conference in New York, he began the long process of relocating to the United States. The brutality of war is brought out early in this narrative, and just to have survived is amazing. Beah writes with frankness and honesty about his experiences but also with other people in mind; his account of the healing process after the horrors he saw is remarkable. His book, especially relevant in today's world, should be in all high school, public, and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 11/15/06; Beah's book is the second title in the new Starbucks book program.Ed.]James Thorsen, Madison Cty. Schs., Weaverville, NC

     Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     April 1, 2007
     Adult/High School-This gripping story by a children's-rights advocate recounts his experiences as a boy growing up in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, during one of the most brutal and violent civil wars in recent history. Beah, a boy equally thrilled by causing mischief as by memorizing passages from Shakespeare and dance moves from hip-hop videos, was a typical precocious 12-year-old. But rebel forces destroyed his childhood innocence when they hit his village, driving him to leave his home and travel the arid deserts and jungles of Africa. After several months of struggle, he was recruited by the national army, made a full soldier and learned to shoot an AK-47, and hated everyone who came up against the rebels. The first two thirds of his memoir are frightening: how easy it is for a normal boy to transform into someone as addicted to killing as he is to the cocaine that the army makes readily available. But an abrupt change occurred a few years later when agents from the United Nations pulled him out of the army and placed him in a rehabilitation center. Anger and hate slowly faded away, and readers see the first glimmers of Beah's work as an advocate. Told in a conversational, accessible style, this powerful record of war ends as a beacon to all teens experiencing violence around them by showing them that there are other ways to survive than by adding to the chaos."Matthew L. Moffett, Pohick Regional Library, Burke, VA"

     Copyright 2007 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     May 28, 2007
     Beah’s harrowing story of a boy caught up in the civil strife in Sierra Leone is not an audio to curl up with before bedtime. Beah’s even-toned narrative is particularly disturbing because it’s almost exactly the same whether he is enjoying the company of a newly found uncle or busy shooting and maiming rebels and even burying them alive. His monotone works particularly well when he is recounting his dreams, for he cannot distinguish his nightmares from his waking life. Beah speaks with a thick accent that omits “th” sounds. Many words are understandable in their context, but a few are not. He also stumbles over some longer and more complex words. Despite these drawbacks, Beah’s tale is a riveting snapshot of childhoods stolen from all too many, not just in Sierra Leone but in Somalia, Iraq, Palestine and other places ravaged by civil wars. Simultaneous release with the FSG hardcover (Reviews, Dec. 18).

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      Starred review from January 1, 2016
      

      It is common in war memoirs to read stories of soldiers leaving for war as 18-year-old boys and returning aged. In the case of savage wars occurring in Africa, children who are forced into service and often drugged are used as pawns in urban combat. Beah portrays a particularly ugly side of battle.

      Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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In A Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah tells a riveting story in his own words: 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.
My new 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."
"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 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...

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