Challenging Reads Book Club

This month, we will read 'A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier' by Ishmael Beah.

New York City, 1998

My high school friends have begun to suspect that I have not told them the full story of my life.

“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”

“Because there is a war.”

“Did you witness some of the fighting?”

“Everyone in the country did.”

“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, traumatized, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become the soldiers of choice. In the more than 50 conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What does war look 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 it is rare to find a first-person account from someone who endured this hell and survived.

In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, Beah, now 26-years-old, tells a powerfully gripping story: At 12-years-old, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By 13-years-old, he had been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At 16-years-old, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive himself, to regain his humanity and to finally heal.

This is an extraordinary and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

If you have any questions about this program, including accommodations, please contact Shannon at nwprograms@cc-pl.org. Please see all our program offerings in our online newsletter at cc-pl.org/connections.

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