This book is exceptionally powerful. I was completely amazed at this true story - the fact that the author is able to discuss some of the horrors he experienced as a child solider in Sierra Leone and his struggles to become 'rehabilitated.' ( )

In plain unremarkable prose, Beah provides a rare accounting of what it was like to be a child solider in the Sierra Leonian army during the civil war. After a traumatizing early life that robbed Ishamael Beah of his youth first as a refugee and then a child soldier in the Sierra Leonian army fighting the RUF during the civil war in the 1990s, Beah was rehabilitied through UNICEF programs and ultimately came to the US to study and write his memoirs.

Unflinchingly, he writes of the atrocities he and his fellow soldiers committed and the mentality that enabled him to enact such brutality. Fortunately, Beah's memoir is neither permeated with a wrenching need for forgiveness, nor a solipsistic demeaner, but rather he tells his war stories as he saw them, including how much he hated being told that what he did was 'not his fault'. Uniquely a personal story of a child soldier, Beah largely stays away the whys and wherefores of the politics and power that led to such a mess, and this is just as well since Beah was basically ignorant of it himself at the time. Nevertheless, from this book alone, the unfamiliar reader may have a hard time getting a sense of why the war happened in the first place, the current (as of writing) state of Sierra Leone, where the country will go from here, or any sense of how this type of warfare and use and abuse of children soldiers can be prevented in the future in Africa or elsewhere. ( )

Reviewed by Hayden (Class of 2012)
“The only wars I knew of were those that I had read about in books or seen in movies such as Rambo: First Blood”. A Long Way Gone is a true story of a young boy who lives in a western country in Africa, called Sierra Leone. In the book there is a war between the Rebels, who want to overthrow the current government, and the Army, which supports the country and its president. Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone. He now is a member of Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee. It was 1993 when he left his village to go to Mattru Jong to perform in a talent show. Little did he know that he would never return. In A Long Way Gone there was a lot of gore and violence. There was one instance when they had burned a man alive just because they wanted to. The violence and gore is needed though to help explain and describe the story. I liked this book because it was very fast paced and very vivid, which made me want to just keep reading. In my opinion the book was very moving and it made me think about how lucky I am to have all the things that I have. I would give it five stars for that reason. ( )

Reviewed by Ivo (Class of 2012)
Gore, violence, blood, and war are all packed into A Long Way Gone. Beah has to escape from a group of rebels that are taking over his village. Ishmael beah’s true story is told after his long and treacherous journey during 1993 when he experiences war and violence. A story about how a war would change Ishmael’s life and tear his family apart. His village is attacked by a group of rebels and Ishmael has to get away. He has to go through many villages and travel miles and miles so that he can escape the rebels. The book has a lot of action, suspense that will keep you going. This is a great book that everyone should read to experience the story of Ishmael Beah. ( )

An absolutely incredible story. I saw Ishmael Beah speak at Oberlin College and he was everything the book implied. Once again, it is amazing what the human spirit can endure! ( )

I saw the ads for this book when it came out and was curious, but somehow never got round to reading it. Then I found it cheap in Powells and made up for lost time. It’s an incredible read and unputdownable just doesn’t begin to describe it.

The world of the first chapter is close enough to ours to be easily imagined, but far enough away to fascinate. Boys play American music tapes and practice dance moves in the street and life is good. Then it all falls apart.

Seeing a world so real and normal change so drastically does something to the reader. You look around yourself and wonder how safe your own world is. How quickly things change.

But Ishmael and his friends are resilient. They move on. They create a life of their own, walking through hostile countryside, avoiding solders, seeking food, making and losing friends as they wonder if their families are still alive.

Hope inspired; hope betrayed; there are passages that are almost too hard to read and you weep for the child too suddenly turned to man. But again the story twists and scenes change around. Ishmael is thrust into yet another world, human kindness and human cruelty mixed.

This memoir of a boy soldier is a story that will stay with me, a must-read, and a tale that’s ultimately filled with hope despite its melancholy. ( )

really good all the way through but bad ending like he was hurrying to finish ( )

This purports to be an account of the life of the author, born in1980 in Sierra Leone, and caught up in the devastating civil war in that country. The account of his awful behavior as a young teenage soldier is not fun to read about (senseless killing, rampant drug use, etc.). But the account of his being rehabilitated and his trip to New York, and later his escape from Sierra Leone, is full of interest. The author in 2004 graduated from Oberlin and now lives in New York ( )

This book is one of the few I've read recently that had me in actual tears at points. It was poignant and made me think about how fortunate I am to have been born where I was, to the family I was and in the time I was. It reminded me what it means to be human, and that even when everything is taken away, your humanity remains as long as you still keep hope. Definitely inspiring. ( )

Reviewed by Rachel - The Class for TeensReadToo.com

Imagine, you live in a village; you know, the ones without electricity and plumbing? You get water from the river for your mother so she can cook dinner but, when you come back, the village is ablaze and everyone is running. Not just running in one direction but everywhere; screaming, yelling, falling down dead.

This is what causes Ishmael Beah's childhood to be lost.

Beah starts out as a quiet, peace-loving boy who suddenly is on the run from all the destruction and terror with his older brother, Junior, and some friends. After months of wandering on paths and in the forest, they come to a farm outside of a village. Beah finds out his family is in the village and as a group they start walking. Then the rebels attack and his family is dead.

Torn, tired, and angry, Beah will eventually lose everything he cared about; his family, his health (both mentally and physically), and almost his life. As a boy soldier recruited by the Sierra Leone Army he changes drastically. Drugs, energy stimulants, and other illegal acts (in the United States) cause him to kill without thinking, never even cringing at the sight of death and basically causing him to feel almost inhuman.

A LONG WAY GONE is Ishmael Beah's memoir based on his experiences and the tragic events of his life. I loved this book because it was a huge eye-opener about the war in Sierra Leone and how it affected everyone, even children. I also believe that everyone should read this book at least once in their life time. Maybe then people can help those who have become boy soldiers or anyone affected by a war. Maybe A LONG WAY GONE could change the world, make it a more peaceful place; that is what I hope can happen. ( )

Such a sad book.

It really shows that human's can overcome some terrible stuff though. ( )

A heart-wrenching account of a young boy's experience as a child soldier during the Civil War in Sierra Leone. Most would not believe that something so horrible could happen as recently as the mid-90s, and unfortunately it is still happening today. Ishmael is a survivor in every sense of the word. ( )

This book painting pictures for me that were hard to endure at times. Ishmael and his buddies were on the way to a talent show when their world turned upside down. Caught in the middle of a war between the rebels and the army, his childhood was erased as life became an all-consuming attempt to survive. He and the boys he traveled with had to scrimp for food and hide from battles. On several occasions they were captured and at danger, Ultimately, he has to join the army. The kinds of things that he had to do as part of his service are unbelievable. When UN removes him from the war and takes him to a rehabilitation center, he has to try to face what happened to him during the war. Just when it seems that life is promising and he has found a new family, he's caught up in the war again.
I listened to this book on CD. I cringed a lot from the violence. I remember trying to cover my neck during the description of slashing of throats of some captured rebels. ( )

a moving, personal account of one boy's life before, during, and after the war in Sierra Leone--as an observer and as a participant. It took several chapters to convince me that Beah's story was true to life and that he alone wrote it, because I was so skeptical that a child reformer could 1) be so completely reformed and 2) write the account entirely on his own, but Ishmael Beah broke all of those stereotypes for me. I am grateful and admire him for it. An extremely exceptional man. The book a little hard to stomach at times, but a very necessary read. ( )

I first heard of this book when Starbucks highlighted it as its featured book in their shops. I have been wanting to read it since then. This was our book club read this month. I enjoyed the book, but it was difficult to read about all the violent and tragic events that took place. Beah is an amazing storyteller and has remembered many details about his life running from the war and then participating in it. His details were so good that I could visualize the the destruction that was taking place around him and imagine the horrific images he described. Even though you knew Beah turned out ok and made it through, you were still encouraged to read through each of the many circumstances, knowing that he was able to come out alive, but surprised each time he did. The story was gripping the whole way through although I was disappointed in the ending. I would have like to hear about how he actually made it to NYC and how he began to live his life there. I appreciated the map in the front of the book and the explanations at the bottom of the pages for words I wouldn't know the meaning to. I have a much better understanding of the turmoil, violence and fear that goes on daily in other parts of the world and ever grateful to be an American. I thank Beah for sharing his story and I wish the best to him in his new life as an American. This is a quick read, but at times I had to put it down and take a break from the story. ( )

This is a powerful, heartbreaking, shocking, true-life account of the experiences of a "boy soldier." After being forced into the government army of Sierra Leone, at age twelve, Ishmael Beah tells of the horrors of his endoctination into its ranks. He describes grusome tales of witnessing torcher and murder, and he explains how ,through fear and drugs, he became a murderer himself. The story follows his life as he faces these unimaginable horrors with a small group of friends and how something as unexpected as rap music helps to keep him from loosing his mind.

The story fortunately does not end with his captivity but follows his story of rescue and his journey to become a man of peace and love. ( )

The biography of Ishmeal Beah is both disturbing and uplifting. The clarity of which the author writes of the civil war in Sierra Leone and having to become a child soldier was very disturbing to me. But the way the author overcomes his past, goes on to finish high school and college is uplifting at the same time. I had a hard time reading the book. The strength of the story would have to be in the details in which Beah uses to relate his tale. The weakness I found was in the background given to the reader in the beginning about the civil war, I wanted to know more. All in all a book that changes my perception of African unrest. ( )

I have spent a lot of time in war-torn countries, but I have never been able to see things through the eyes of one of the child-soldiers until now. This book is excellently written, and gave me a whole new perspective into the lives of these children. I may be a "softy" or "sentimental", but I went through a whole box of kleenex while reading the account of what it's like not only during the fighting, but before and after it as well. A very moving story. ( )

Wow! What an eye opening book. This is a well told story about a boy that endured a war and survived being a child solider. The author leads the reader through his story telling it in a way that makes you wonder how such things could happen in this world, especially to children. A strength of the book was the view-point it was told from. The first person point of view really made an impact. Another strengthen was the appropriate use of flashbacks. They occurred at the right time throughout the book and really added to the impact of the story. One thing I would say was a weak point of the book is that I wished there was more background information on the war itself. I really enjoyed the story of Ishmael, but I wish that I knew more about the war itself. ( )

This story is heartwrenching. You can see he was regular, innocent young boy who was forced to change into something altogether diffferent. His story of the war before becoming a soldier is horrific enough, but it continues to become more gruesome as a youth fighter. FOR MORE MATURE READERS, IT IS AN IMPORTANT BOOK ABOUT WAR, HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS AND IMMIGRANT STORIES.

A Long Way Gone is a heart wrenching story of a boy soldier from Sierra Leone. While I can't say I loved reading this story it was very interesting and a topic that needs to be discussed in today's society.
A strength of this book was getting the reader to think. The amount of violence was hard to handle but necessary to the story. ( )

Fiction or non-fiction? Non-fiction.

What led you to pick up this book? It was the book club choice for October

Plot summary: The story of Ishmael, a young boy, is Sierra Leone, who witnesses first hand the war in the early 1990s and eventually goes on to become a soldier to fight in the war against the rebels in order to survive and avenge the death of his family.

What did you like most about the book? I like how the entire bookcomes full circle. You start with a happy boy, then into war, then recovery, happiness, war, and finally freedom.

What did you think of the ending? I wasn’t sure how it was going to end, but having finished it I wish that I could hear more about his journey to New York and finding his new family, did he have contact anymore with the family he left behind. I feel like I’m still missing a crutial part of the story. The only reason I know he survived is because he wrote the book.

Do you recommend this book? If you use a rating system, what’s your rating? Most definitely. I’d give it 4.5/5.

A memoir of a young man that was forced to fight as a child soldier in the Seirra Leone Civil War during the late 90's. The story goes from the boys first experience with the war, when the rebels invaded his village, through his years being forced to fight as a soldier, and eventually to how he escaped and made his way to America. The book is a commentary on social conditions in parts of the world far from our home.

Sierra Leone, January, 1993 - Ishmael Beah (born November, 1980) is in Mattru Jong, with his brother and a friend, 16 miles from his home of Mogbwemo in the Moyamba District, to attend a talent show performing as a rap and dance group, when news comes that his village has been attacked by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Intent on returning home to find and be reunited with their families, they are ultimately destined to wander the bush fleeing from the violence and recruitment into the RUF.

Through adventure and misadventure that makes up much of the first half of the book, Beah suffers the most tragic loss of all, before finally finding protection in Yele, Bonthe District, under the protection of the Sierra Leonean government army. The army however, depleted through various battles against the RUF, are finally forced to appeal to the young men to come forward and fight; to protect the village and revenge the deaths of their families and friends. While not forcibly conscripted, the alternative is eviction from from the village and their protection. Here, Beah, at 13-years of age finally resigns to his fate - as a child soldier.

The next few years are filled with unrelenting violence and killing, fuelled by hatred, drugs, peer pressure and war movies; until, in January 1996, he is chosen by his commander to go with a UNICEF team to Freetown to be rehabilitated and repatriated as a civilian. Brainwashed, suffering drug addiction and feeling betrayed, the rehabilitation process is anything but smooth, but through the dedication and patience of a nurse, Esther, Beah is finally rehabilitated and released into the care of his uncle.

A gifted performer and speaker, in 1996, Beah would be chosen to go to the United Nations in New York City, to represent the youth of his country in the First International Children's Parliament. It was here that he met Laura Simms, who would eventually become his foster mother and help bring Beah to New York to live in 1998, after Beah was forced to flee his home in Freetown after the overthrow of the democratically elected government, and the death of his uncle.

Blessed with a photographic memory, Beah writes with remarkable recall and detail. The simplicity of his writing gives his story added power. After travelling with the 'innocent' Beah through the first half of the book, the violence he is capable of, retold in graphic detail, increases its dramatic impact on the reader. If the book has any short comings, then it may be in its abrupt end. The book's credibility has been challenged in some quarters, but if its remarkable success has helped raise the issue of child soldiers to the prominence it deserves, then Beah may feel he has nothing to prove. ( )

“My imagination at ten years old didn’t have the capacity to grasp what had taken away the happiness of the refugees.”

Two years later, twelve-year-old Ishmael Beah is “touched by war,” and he no longer has to imagine the misery and desolation wrought by war. Ishmael sets out from home in Mogbwemo to perform at a talent show in the town of Mattru Jong with his brother and friends as a boy full of youth, mischief, and dreams of fame as a rap star; he winds up traveling down the path to become a soldier boy whose innocence, home, and dreams are quickly and irrevocably destroyed.

After the boys find out the Revolutionary United Front rebels have struck their village, they set out together, but they soon became aware that others regard them with suspicion: “People were terrified of boys our ages”. The longer Ishmael and his friends wander facing constant suspicion and imminent starvation, the more susceptible they become to recruitment into the role of child soldiers.

After a protracted period of wandering full of fear and uncertainty, Ishmael enters a town full of Sierra Leone Army soldiers. These soldiers offer him drugs, brainwash him, and set him on a certain course–merciless killing. The lieutenant tells the boys the rebels are the enemy: “They have lost everything that makes them human. They do not deserve to live. That is why we must kill every single one of them. Think of it as destroying a great evil. It is the highest service you can perform for your country.” and “We are not like the rebels, those riffraffs who kill people for no reason. We kill them for the good and betterment of this country.” From age thirteen to sixteen, Ishmael places his faith in these beliefs and he kills gratuitously and without remorse.

When Ishmael is sixteen, members of UNICEF pluck him out of the army and set about releasing Ishmael from his life’s destructive path. At first, he is unhappy to be rescued and separated from his squad and his gun, “My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed.” However, he is sent to a rehabilitation center in Freetown where he receives care and counseling enough that he recognizes how the soldiers lied to him, what evil he had committed against his fellow humans, and how he needs to break free in order to have a chance at a humane, sane future. As Ishmael begins to rediscover who he was before he was turned into a child soldier, he finds himself faced with a new task–to go before the United Nations and illuminate the realities of life for child soldiers.

Beah’s candid reporting of the extremes of brutality and depravity make the memoir all the more gutwrenching and disconcerting. After he concludes his memoir, Beah provides historical context for the events he recounts noting how Sierra Leone suffered a fate similar to other former British colonies upon gaining freedom–civil strife, corruption, and military brutality reigned supreme and the children, along with everyone else, suffered because of it.

Unfortunately, recently the veracity of details of Ishmael Beah’s experiences have come into question by a reporter for The Australian (citing factors such as chronological anomalies); see Peter Wilson’s Thanks for the Memories for more information. Beah has issued a rebuttal statement that addresses some of these criticisms.

In the end, while the details of Beah’s reporting of events are not above dispute, his story still serves as a not-at-all gentle reminder of the atrocity that is the existence of child soldiers. The existence of child soldiers is without dispute, and Beah’s text–his sparse recounting of such flagrant violence by ones so young–precludes reader’s complacent thought in this regard.

For those who wish to read more fiction and/or nonfiction relating to African wars, Sierra Leone, and/or child soldiers, a few suggestions follow:

Fiction–Moses, Citizen & Me by Delia Jarrett-Macauley (African Wars, child soldiers), Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English by Ken Saro-Wiwa (African Wars, child soldiers), or Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna (African Wars, Sierra Leone), Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (child soldiers, Card’s other books such as Ender’s Shadow and Speaker for the Dead speak to child soldiers as well)

Nonfiction–Children at War by P.W. Singer (African wars, child soldiers), Child Soldiers, Adult Interests: The Global Dimensions of the Sierra Leonean Tragedy by J. Peter Pham (African wars, child soldiers, Sierra Leone), Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Ugandas Children by Grace Akallo (African wars, child soldiers), Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War by Jimmie Briggs (child soldiers), Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak by Jean Hatzfeldor (African wars), or One Day the Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War (P.S.) by Charles London (African wars, child soldiers) ( )