I am not going to tell you that A Long Way Gone is an easy read. It might be a necessary read, but it is not an easy read. The hard things these boys went through, and yet, and yet their resilience. They stayed together, they fought for each other, and came out on the other side hurt, but figuring out there is something better. Something more worth fighting for. That hope in the end… made this hard read worthwhile and that’s not a bad thing!
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Basic Details for A Long Way Gone
Title: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a boy Soldier
Author: Ishmael Beal
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books; First Edition (August 5, 2008)
Pages: 229
Intended Audience: adult
Genre: Historical African Biographies, Boy Solider, African War, Biography, Black Biography
Available formats: Hardcover, Kindle, Audio, Paperback
My Thoughts
My mom I think gave me this book to read a while back. She told me it was interesting but a hard read.
I’d call that a fairly accurate description. Take some boys, going to school, enjoying their life and then throw them into a middle of a war. A war filled with brutality, complete loss of life, and families torn apart. Make them fight for survival. Have them do well, (well as well as can be expected), until they are captured and made to fight.
Not only were they taught to fight, they were drugged up and encouraged to be violent. Be violent and live, or die. Survival means living.
Life in that war-zone was so very hard. Not just for the boy soldiers but for anyone getting in the way of either side of the conflict. People died, villages literally disappearing overnight, people fleeing everywhere. Everyone just needing to survive.
Something beyond survival
Until one day it suddenly stops. And you have to learn a new way to be and it’s hard, just so hard to see beyond the now to the future.
So much was hard. I hated reading about the brutality and wondered why it needed to be included. Then I read about the end, about the need to change, and how sudden and difficult it was. And the hope offered once the boys figured it out things could be different. That hope at the end. It made all the pieces fit together.
So A Long Way Home, a hard read, but necessary if you want to understand the plight of the boy soldiers during the war in Africa. It is not one I would recommend for sensitive readers as it is not an easy read. But if you appreciate a hard book offering hope at the end, a book that speaks truth, this might work!
Sometimes the “hard reads” are exactly what we need. I have added this to my ever growing list.
Oh good. (lists always grow don’t they?)