monthly review

    Along Way Gone is a touching autobiography written by Ishmael Beah that tells a story of the memories of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone during their civil war. the kids were forced to kill people with AK-47s and forced to take drug mixed with gun powder just to stay awake and on duty. They showed them war movies to make the kids violent. He escapes Sierra Leone and manages to get educated enough to the story of his experience with great detail. This real life tale involves the life of Ishmael who lived a fairly happy life in Sierra Leone until civil war breaks out. Then he is forced to run for his life, becoming separated from his family and later losing them to murder by the rebels. He later finds a way to be rehabilitated and regain his childhood, and then once again learns how to love and forget the hatred and killing of his past. 

    

Ishmael Beah's purpose of this book was to tell his life story of when he was in Sierra Leone as a boy soldier and how he was mistreated by the rebels that turn children into the heartless and mindless killers that they were. He wanted to show the world the world that not only men fight wars but even little kids that not barely even 10 year old yet. It gives us American's, being one of the super powers, a greater reason to intervene in other country's problems so that other children don't experience what he had to go through. He also wanted to show the world the reality of warfare and how crazy people can get when they are determine to reach a goal and become blinded with their ambition that they don't care who they are hurting but themselves.

    

    This book is intended for everyone out there so that we can learn from other people's mistakes so that we don't repeat the same thing. It is kind of obvious to whom this book was intended for because he is doing a whole ton of work on child protecting during war and this book was to get peoples attention will a true story about what could end up happening anytime during war.

    Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in November 23, 1980. He then  had moved over to the United States in 1998 and and continued to finish his last two years of high school at the United Nations International School located New York. He graduated from Oberlin College in 2004 with a degree in Politics. He is currently member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division Advisory Committee and has talked to the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO) at the Marine Corps War fighting Laboratory, and many other NGO panels on children that are being affected by war world wide. He has also spoken before the United Nations on several different times. His work has appeared in Vespertine Press and LIT magazine. He is committed to all of this work and protect of children because of the heart breaking experience he explain in the book along way gone.  

    This real life tale involves the life of Ishmael who lived a fairly happy life in Sierra Leone until civil war breaks out. Then he is forced to run for his life, becoming separated from his family and later losing them to murder by the rebels. He later finds a way to be rehabilitated and regain his childhood, and then once again learns how to love and forget the hatred and killing of his past.