Resource page for A Long Way Gone
The questions and discussion topics that are linked below are designed
to enhance your reading of Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone. They
will enrich your experience as you explore his inspiring, infinitely valuable story.
An estimated 300,000 child soldiers now fight in the more than fifty
violent conflicts raging around the globe. Far removed from the world
of pundits and journalists, policymakers and diplomats, a thirteen-year-old
boy named Ishmael Beah became one of these young warriors in
Sierra Leone. Now in his mid-twenties, he courageously tells of the
horrific road that led him to wield an AK-47 and, fueled by trauma and
drugs, commit terrible acts. A Long Way Gone brings a rare voice of
frontline realism to a widely publicized (and widely misunderstood) human-rights crisis.
In poignantly clear and dauntless storytelling, Ishmael describes how
he fled brutal rebel soldiers, traveling miles from home on foot and
gradually being reduced to a life of raw survival instincts. Yet, unlike
so many of his peers, Ishmael lived to reclaim his true self, emerging
from Sierra Leone as the gentle, hopeful young man he was at heart.
His memoir is at once crucial testimony for understanding the tragedy
of contemporary war zones, and a testament to the power of peacemakers.
Click on link below and follow links to a video interview with the author.
