Book Review

A Long Way Gone
A Memoir
By Ishmael Beah

When Ishmael Beah was 12 years old, his life was changed forever. Throughout the whole memoir A Long Way Gone, Beah openly describes his experiences fighting as a child in Sierra Leone. He doesn't sugarcoat anything or leave anything out. He tells his experiences as he had them; the reader gets a vivid and accurate picture of his trials and tribulations. And, yet, despite all his hardships, Beah managed to overcome all his obstacles.

Before Beah was ever touched by the war, he was a normal child, enjoying spending time with his brother. He had an obsession with rap music, which later on ends up helping him. Beah spent his time learning new rap songs and also learning the dances for them. he was a carefree child. But when he was 12-years-old, he grew up literally overnight. One day he was hanging out with his cousins and the next he was frantically running back to his hometown desperately trying to find his family. He couldn't. They were lost forever. As the memoir progresses, we see Beah change, and not for the better. He loses all his morals and values. He just begins killing kids and adults alike. He laughed when he killed them. "I took turns smoking marijuana and sniffing brown brown." Beah even became addicted to drugs. He had the same DNA, but the boy Beah had become was a stranger.

Beah saw things that no one should ever have to see, let alone a 12-year-old who lost everyone in his family except his older brother. "Her child had been shot dead as she ran for her life." just from this one sentence excerpt, one could only imagine the horrors Beah witnessed. He described, on more than one occasion, dead bodies and how they were killed. These images are forever embedded into his brain. There is no way he can get rid of them. Beah also tells of his nightmares and flashback he still has today, years later and thousands of miles away in New York. "I was afraid to fall asleep but staying awake also brought back painful memories."

After Beah got rescued by UNICEF, he was still a stranger compared to the boy he was before his hell began. He rebelled against civilians; he had been brainwashed to think were all bad. He was used to killing any civilian he saw. But eventually, he learned to trust again. Ishmael Beah went from a carefree child to a brainwashed adult-minded child back to someone who learned how to live again. Although Beah can never go back to his life before being a boy soldier, he still talks about the memories he has. He often refers to his grandmother and all the stories that she taught him about the moon and morals.

A Long Way Gone is a book that should by read be everyone. It is not a typical memoir. Most memoirs are about abusive childhoods. This memoir is about a boy who had to fight to stay alive. He even had to fight to for his food, to see his family again. He was fighting to live. The most amazing thing about this memoir is that not once in the story does Beah try to evoke sympathy from the reader. He never once feels sorry for himself. His voice and tone stays strong throughout the whole memoir. He knew that if he wanted to live, he had to fight, and this comes through very strongly to the reader. He makes the reader feel like he felt: almost hopeless at times but yet he never, ever loses all hope. A Long Way Gone sends the message of hope and faith while also sending the message of the effects and horrors of children fighting in wars.