Monthly Review: A Long Way Gone

What are the weaknesses of this book, in your opinion?
    In the novel, A Long Way Gone; Memoirs of a boy solider by Ishmael Beah, there are many high and low points of this book. What I had really disliked about this particular book was the ending. Ishmael Beah writes it in such a way that it seems he just dropped his pen and left the reader hanging, and not in a good way. He concluses the memoir by retelling the tale of how he escaped Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, where he lives with an uncle, whet to school, and was even invited to speak in 1996 at the UN in New York. When Freetown was overrun by the joined forces of the rebels (RUF or Revolutionary United Front) and Army of Sierra Leone in 1997 (the Army of Sierra Leone was originally fighting against the RUF), he and goes into a neighboring city.
    Yes, this book was absolutely amazing and a real eye opener to the sheltered world most of us live in. I knew that there were many problems and civil wars occurring within Africa, but I never realized how much war truly affected the country and its culture. This is not a typical war that we envision here in the United States, this is a dismantling of a country’s way of life. Beah gives the detailed accounts of things that seem unimaginable in today’s world. The fact that governments around the world had an idea that these things were going on and did nothing to stop it sooner is extremely upsetting. It is an inspiration to see what Ishmael went through and to live and teach the world about the horrible things that occur in third country wars, but the ending was not as good as I anticipated. I understand that this is a non-fiction novel, which means there may not always be a happy ending, but it was a disappointment. 

Find out about the author. How did they end up writing this particular book? Is the author's true life reflected in the book in any way(s)?   
On November 23, 1980, Ishmael Beah was born in a rural African country, called Sierra Leone. In A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, the author, Ishmael Beah, tells a powerfully gripping story about his childhood struggles and hardships of being caught in between two sides of a war. When Beah was eleven, Ishmael’s life, along with the lives of many of other  native Sierra Leoneans, was thrown tragically off course due to a horrible civil war.  By the time Ishmael was twelve, RUF, aka rebels, raided his village so he ran of on his own with a couple of companions. Their goal was to stay alive and find their family which had all be separated due to the attacks on their villages. After Beah finds out his entire family has perished under the force of yet another rebel raiding, he is recruited to defend his country against the RUFs as a child soldier for the government army. He then turns into a ruthless killer capabile atroshous acts and killing without cause.
    During a February 14, 2007 appearance on The Daily Show, Beah said that he believed that returning to civilized society was more difficult than the act of becoming a child soldier, saying that dehumanizing children is a relatively easy task.
     After three years of ruthless slaying, UNICEF slowly but surely removed most child soliders in order to rehavilitate them to lead normal successful lives away from the war. Here, with the help of paintent understanding staff members, is where Ishmeal Beah regains himself and is able to begin to heal.
     In 1998, Ishmael escaped Freetown after the war caught back up with him and got a hold of Laura Simms, his foster mother in New York, and came to live with an her American family in America. He completed high school and was subsequently accepted to Oberlin College.This is an extraordinary and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
    This memoir was directly connected to his life because it was his own autobiography. He is a unique individual who has conquered many challenging task and overcome obstacles we here could never even think possible. This is an eye opener and everyone should read this to prevent further damage to our world. 











What made you choose this book? Were you satisfied with your choice?   
    Like love, I didn't find this book, it found me. It was another usual day at the media center and this time, we were there to choose our first literature circle books. The purpose of this was to experience new books by completing a section of our book when we finish each section of our lit circle book (beginning, middle, end), write a 300-word letter about the section on your blog for our LC partner(s) to read. What we put in our letters is entirely up to whatever we want. We can write about how we annotated, parts we like or disliked and why, any of the monthly review questions, things that are confusing us, things we want to discuss, connections between this book and other things, and basically anything.
    While at the media center, everyone had already loosely formed the group they were going to be in. The group I ended up with consisted of Rosalie, Patrick, and, uhm, that other guy's name I can't seem to recall. (I found out it was Jim) I had actually NOT wanted to read this book, it was just another book of who knows, who cares to me. However, that is the thing about books, you should not judge them by their cover. My hands were desperately trying to find the novel, A bastard in Carolina, or something along those lines. Although my search was futile, our group came across that everyone seemed pretty interested in, Touching Spirit Bear. A couple of days into this new experiment, it turns out only one person could get a hold of this book which made it extremely difficult to work things out, so we all decided on a new, more interesting book. Our understanding and compassion teacher only had two copies of this book available which means that we had to two on our own. I took the responsibility of finding and checking them out with my card at the school library. Needless to say, everyone enjoyed the emotion this book brought, I just hope that the other memebers remember to return the book.