A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
2 journalers for this copy...
This book was found in my mother's house when we were cleaning it out to move her to assisted living.
I knew this book was buried on a shelf somewhere, but it looked a bit heavy for reading in difficult times. Then KateKintail passed along an audiobook copy to ear read and I was desperate for audiobooks and figured I was more likely to read it in that format. It made a good choice for Black History Month in February.
Beah is a gifted story teller and his images are lyrical and poetic, even when discussing unpleasant things. And much of the book is not just unpleasant, it is horrific, with wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children that he witnessed and, later, participated in as a child soldier. All war is rife with terrors and tragedies, but these are of a different scale, with a 12-year learning to slit a man's throat or seeing someone bludgeoned to death with chunks of concrete. Through it all, Beah's humanity and his (at times tenuous) grip on his soul comes through, as he forms close bonds with the boys he is running from the war with and later with the ones he is waging war with. Were this a fictional story, it would be deemed implausible because of the times he seems to reach a place of safety only to lose it again.
The trials and difficulties of life are not amenable to a clear-cut comparison or weighing, because the fact that one person has extreme suffering does not diminish the severe suffering of another. But one is left at the end of this book admiring Beah's strength and determination and tenacity and resilient spirit in continuing to reach for a better world in the face of stressors that are unimaginable in my more privileged world. This book is an important witness to the terrible things that people do to each other in the quest for power and fortune. I just wish I had more answers to how to avert the repetition of these deeds which go on even now.
Beah is a gifted story teller and his images are lyrical and poetic, even when discussing unpleasant things. And much of the book is not just unpleasant, it is horrific, with wholesale slaughter of men, women, and children that he witnessed and, later, participated in as a child soldier. All war is rife with terrors and tragedies, but these are of a different scale, with a 12-year learning to slit a man's throat or seeing someone bludgeoned to death with chunks of concrete. Through it all, Beah's humanity and his (at times tenuous) grip on his soul comes through, as he forms close bonds with the boys he is running from the war with and later with the ones he is waging war with. Were this a fictional story, it would be deemed implausible because of the times he seems to reach a place of safety only to lose it again.
The trials and difficulties of life are not amenable to a clear-cut comparison or weighing, because the fact that one person has extreme suffering does not diminish the severe suffering of another. But one is left at the end of this book admiring Beah's strength and determination and tenacity and resilient spirit in continuing to reach for a better world in the face of stressors that are unimaginable in my more privileged world. This book is an important witness to the terrible things that people do to each other in the quest for power and fortune. I just wish I had more answers to how to avert the repetition of these deeds which go on even now.
Journal Entry 3 by 6of8 at -- Mail or by hand-rings, RABCK, meetings, Maryland USA on Thursday, April 1, 2021
Released 2 yrs ago (4/1/2021 UTC) at -- Mail or by hand-rings, RABCK, meetings, Maryland USA
CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:
This book was on my mother's shelves when I was cleaning out her house. I don't know if she read it or not, but probably because she was a voracious reader. I will send it to my sister-in-law to read. She might not finish it because it is a very heavy book with a lot of violence in it. But then again she might.
Any future reader or recipient of this book is encouraged to leave a journal entry here on the BookCrossing site to let prior readers know the fate of the book. You can make an anonymous entry without joining the BookCrossing movement, but if you are interested in joining, it is a free and spam-free community where your contact information is not shared with others. Best of all, members receive private messages via e-mail from books like this one when those books are journaled, allowing for long-term relationships between books and readers.
Any future reader or recipient of this book is encouraged to leave a journal entry here on the BookCrossing site to let prior readers know the fate of the book. You can make an anonymous entry without joining the BookCrossing movement, but if you are interested in joining, it is a free and spam-free community where your contact information is not shared with others. Best of all, members receive private messages via e-mail from books like this one when those books are journaled, allowing for long-term relationships between books and readers.
Journal Entry 4 by minibear at Little Free Library in Syracuse, Utah USA on Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Left in Little Free Library near Syracuse Museum.