The First Book

The first book I read this year was Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
Here are the stats:
Author: Ishmael Beah
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date: 2008
My start date: 1-1-10 (New Year's Day!)
My finish date: 1-7-10

Now to the book. Wow. It was intense! I realized later that it was a rather heavy book to begin my year, but it was a good read and did have a rather hopeful conclusion. For those of you who haven't encountered this book yet, it is a very fascinating memoir of Beah's childhood experiences in Sierra Leone, especially of those experiences during the gruesome civil war, for part of which he was a child soldier. Beah weaves his story together in a breathtaking way, interspersing the blunt and shocking wartime images with memories of a more idyllic past and in a way that paints a beautiful picture of the culture of Sierra Leone, which is something that often seems lost, in my opinion, to outsiders who generally only have the opportunity to see the violent images of children branded with the RUF initials and toting AK47s.
Beah does not sugarcoat the realities of wartime Africa. If you are not sure of your ability to handle strong images of violence and death in your literature, this might not be your best read. However, in my opinion, anyone who can handle it, should. Education is always a good thing and I think it important that we understand what happens in other places of the world. I took a course in college on the Literature of the Holocaust, which really affected me. The imagery in those works was so strong that by the end of the semester, I was having regular dreams that my roommate was trying to gas me. However, those works brought me as close to understanding the Holocaust experience as I will ever be able to. This book brought back some of those same feelings. Once again, I was reading a pain that I can never truly understand, but at the very least it was causing me to think. Some of the shocking stories in this work were very reminiscent to me of the style of writing in Jerzy Kozinski's The Painted Bird. It isn't pretty, but these things are happening (or have happened in the case of the Holocaust literature).
Now, one thing that I must bring up is the so-called controversy surrounding Beah's book. I am the type of person that when I read something, I always want to look it up on the internet to learn more. So, naturally I searched for Beah on wikipedia and was dismayed to read that there are several attempts out there trying to discredit him. The popular accusation is that Beah did not actually experience all of the things mentioned in his book, but rather that the story is more a compilation of all of the stories of his friends. Many try to argue that he could not possibly have experienced all of those things in the time indicated and some are very convinced that, although he indicates a time-span of multiple years for his service in the army, in reality it might only be a matter of months. Come on people! How much horror must a child experience before he is "legitimate"?? Even should the reality be that Beah was "only" a child soldier for "mere" months, is that really ok?? Any time that a child becomes a killing machine is too much! Beah openly acknowledges that the soldiers were heavily drugged and thus some details might become fuzzy. Similarly, so what if the stories come from more than one source? Chances are probably pretty good that the others will never have the opportunity to voice their experiences. If Beah can do it for them, more power to him. Further, if a child (or adult, as Beah is now, being a year older than I am) is so far traumatized that they must write such stories, that speaks volumes in itself. The above mentioned story by Kozinski was fictional, but that makes it no less relevent to the Holocaust experience. War and violence are horrifying and traumatizing. Period. I applaud Beah for escaping at all to write what he did.
Whew, heavy topic. But excellent first read.
Tomorrow, still playing catch up, I will discuss Susan Richard's Chosen by a Horse.
In the meantime, your comments are encouraged and keep reading!
Sarah