a long way gone
A long way gone from normal life, Ishmael Beah recounts his journey from childhood to loss of innocence through bloodshed and the horrors of war from both sides of the fence—as victim and perpetrator of brutal acts in order to survive a country in chaos.Told with a clear voice, his vivid memories haunt and tear at the very insides of your emotional well-being. How lucky we are to have lived normal lives, to not have watched friends die in a barrage of guns and exploding bombs. It is a reality far removed from the comfort of our own homes as we complain bitterly about this and that, sitting in comfortable chairs and lying on clean sheets. How insignificant our whims, our troubles, our problems as we like to call them, while a world away, children become immune to death and expect it at any moment as it determines their very existence. It makes me think that there is so much work in the world that needs to be done that would have more meaning than what I am doing now. I feel so far removed from the hardship, the daily struggle of life as it is lived in countries torn apart by war, by unstable governments, by coup after coup. I have vague memories of being in the midst of several coups; but the experience of being an observer hoping for it to be over in the city is far from being in the thick of it.
A Long Way Gone confirms that despite losing hope—your humanity—there exists the resilience of the human spirit to go on and overcome impossibilities.
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