Book Review Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

A Long Way Gone Book Review

Ishmael Beah is a well-known author of the memoir A Long Way Gone which is about a teen Sierra Leonean boy from a small village of Mattru Jong who went through the terrors of war. The book shows how the civil war happening in Sierra Leone at the time affected the lives of many children and families who had no food, water or hope to live. With the rebels raiding towns disguised as civilians, people lost trust in others, even kids. The people were constantly tortured until they said something and were thrown out of villages. A Long Way Gone is an interesting, self-oriented book on the Sierra Leone Civil War because of the author’s intentions and credibility in writing, biases, and the lessons it taught.

Ishmael Beah has made strong points in A Long Way Gone about his contentions of writing. Ishmael Beah wrote this memoir to inform people about the terrors of war and how the world knew little about the war while the innocent civilians suffered great

He does not tell us the reasons the rebels were causing so much chaos, but he informed us that the army was doing it to attack them back. With the rebels, shown as evil beings, readers have a false perspective of their actions. The book did alter my perceptions because when the army was made to attack the Revolutionary United Front (RAF), it seemed as though they became the rebels by attacking innocent civilians rather than saving themselves and others from the attacks. I have a distorted view of the army and that they have committed just as many crimes as the rebels have. The soldiers imagined burning a rebel’s house they set on fire while Ishmael expresses, “We watch it burn and I laugh” (113). I disliked how the lieutenant gaslighted the army soldiers into justifying their actions by blaming the rebels for all of their problems and claiming that they deserved to