A Look Back on "A Long Way Gone"
Hardcover, 229 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Price: $22.00
Published: 2007
When Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier was published in February 2007, it jumped straight to the number two position on The New York Times bestseller list. Nearly every national newspaper and popular magazine praised A Long Way Gone for its emotional intensity and unvarnished portrayal of depravity. Beah's harrowing story of being forcibly recruited at age 13 into the Sierra Leone army garnered critical acclaim from accomplished writers like Steve Coll, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for Ghost Wars (2004); Sebastian Junger (A Death in Belmont, 2007; The Perfect Storm, 1997); and Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle, 2005).
According to Jeff Seroy, a Farrar, Straus & Giroux spokesperson, A Long Way Gone sold close to 700,000 copies in hardcover upon its release. Time placed it on its top ten list of the finest nonfiction books of 2007. It won two awards from the Young Adult Library Services Association: one, an Alex Award, which is given to adult books that have teen appeal; the other, a Best Books for Young Adults prize. The Quills, an awards program that honors the year’s most entertaining and enlightening titles, nominated A Long Way Gone as 2007's best Biography/Memoir and Beah as Debut Author of the Year. A Long Way Gone was published in paperback in August 2008.
And for Beah, 2007 was a year of constant conversation about his war-torn Sierra Leone, the brutal attack on his family that left him orphaned and homeless at age 12, and his role as a boy soldier who killed and tortured rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) while drugged-up on amphetamines, cocaine, brown brown (a mixture of cocaine and gunpowder) and marijuana. The year also brought about a media blitz. Appearances on television and radio programs worldwide put a face and voice to a story that's as astounding as it is disturbing and catapulted Beah to international recognition. And though this fame was born out of Beah's cataclysmal loss of childhood innocence and the tragedy of his diminished humanity, it has rewarded Beah—and the world at large.
Beah gave the keynote address at the Global Young Leaders Conference in July 2007, and was named United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Advocate for Children Affected by War in November 2007. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Committee and has spoken at the United Nations about the his experience as a child soldier to raise public awareness of the estimated 300,000 children engaged in warfare throughout the globe. In 2008, he co-founded the Network of Young People Affected by War (NYPAW) with a mission to raise awareness of the plight of children in conflict zones, encourage an end to hostilities, and offer role models for children who are currently striving to recover from war.
As Beah shows in A Long Way Gone becoming a child soldier is not an act of will. It is an act of survival. Children who've had their families murdered or been separated from them after a violent raid of their homes and villages have no where to go, no one to care for them, no guidance, no water or food, no sanctuary from harm. Because these children lack every essential need, joining a military group—whether it's the Sierra Leone army whose purpose is to defend their country and destroy the rebels or the RUF whose motivation is to annihilate the army and all civilians hostile to their cause—provides them protection, a sense of belonging, clothing, an end to their petrifying isolation. The group becomes the children's surrogate family, and the children will do that which is demanded of them to remain within the confines of that security. Methodically, they are conditioned by the groups' commanders to annihilate with impunity—after all, as the children are continually reminded, they're exacting revenge on the enemy who killed their families.
When Beah's village in Mogbwemo was attacked in 1993, he and his brother, Junior, were on a 16-mile walk to Mattru Jong to participate in a talent show. Beah and friends had created a rap and dance group, and Naughty By Nature, Heavy D & The Boyz, LL Cool J, and Run-D.M.C. were their icons. They learned of the attack the next day, but knew nothing of the fate of their parents or brother, Ibrahim. They knew it was too dangerous to return to Mogbwemo, or even to remain in Mattru Jong. Rumors circulated that it was the next village to be attacked. Within weeks, the RUF advanced on Mattru Jong, and Beah, Junior, and four friends fled the assault of machine gun bullets and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). One of the villagers who was running behind Beah as they escaped into the bush "caught the fragments of [an] RPG. He cried out loudly and screamed that he was blind. No one dared to … help him. He was halted by another grenade that exploded, causing his remains and blood to sprinkle like rain on the nearby leaves and bushes." Terrorized, Beah and friends ran for over an hour to escape Mattru Jong.
They wandered for weeks from one abandoned village to the next barren town, searching for sustenance or the familiar face of a villager who might know the whereabouts of their families. While in the village of Kamator, where the boys spent three months helping farmers plant crops, the rebels launched a nighttime raid. Beah was separated from his friends—and he never saw Junior again.
It's best to read the rest of Beah's riveting story rather than to have any more detail revealed in this column. Beah's memoir is direct and unflinching and deeply personal. To read it is to experience it—and oftentimes, a pause is needed to stomach its depiction of cruelty.
A Long Way Gone brought Ishmael Beah to great heights in 2007. However, 2008 plagued him with controversy. An article titled "Africa's War Child" appeared in The Australian newspaper and reported "a possible key discrepancy in Beah's story," which, if it is true, undermines his chronology of events as a child soldier. The origin of the newspaper's investigation—as conducted by Peter Wilson, the London-based Europe correspondent—was a noble attempt to clarify statements made by a Sierra Leonean who claimed to be Beah's father. However, once the newspaper scrutinized Beah's assertions and suggested that A Long Way Gone misrepresented facts, the proverbial "can of worms" was pried opened—and the child soldier who at one time won a killing exhibition contest by slicing open a prisoner's throat with his bayonet shifted once again into self-protection mode. Beah released a statement addressing the The Australian's accusations in January 2008. You can read it here.
Despite Beah's pointed attempt to legitimize his story and tamp down the claims that he mislead readers, more bad press came his way. The UK's The Sunday Times published an article by Bryan Appleyard in February 2008, which exposed Beah's school documents as reported by Wilson in The Australian and again questioned the veracity of Beah's timeline.
"A clear possibility [for continued inquiry]," Appleyard writes, "is that the sheer success of the book and the celebrity of its author is driving a combination of envy and, in the small world of Sierra Leone, a desire to be part of the story.
"If you go round waving a book in Sierra Leone and asking, 'Who knows this person?' somebody is going to say, 'Of course, that’s my son or could be my brother,' who knows?," Beah explains. "I don’t worry about it. For me, my story is accurate and I presented it accurately and I stand by it. I’m not worried about it.”
Portions of this book review appeared originally in MotherTown in February 2008.
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