Book Talk: A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

 1. A long way gone is a first-hand account of the authors experience being a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. The story details the authors first introduction to the war and how his personal involvement changes over time from just a victim of its horrors to becoming an active participant both in good ways and bad. From running from gunshots to firing on his “enemies”, 12-year-old Ishmael Beah recounts his war story and how his prospective slowly evolves from that of an innocent young boy to one of an experienced soldier. Through all the twists and turns that Ishmael encounters he becomes numb to the realities of the world in order to cope with the horrors that are all so true and personal for him. Through the help of a kind young nurse and music Ishmael eventually begins to reenter reality and become a functioning human outside of the realms of war but still holds onto his experiences of his abruptly ended childhood in order to make a difference and help those in the world around him.

2. This text is powerful on many accounts. This book is a real-life retelling of a tragedy that struck a young child. While most students of any age in our classroom will not be able to relate directly to the fact of being an active participant in a bloody civil war it is guaranteed that they will be struggling with some sort of horror, whether it is one we view as an actual horror is beside the point. The age range I would recommend for this book would 9th or 10th grade simply because the main character in this book is of a younger age. I would not suggest this book for a middle school/ Jr. high audience due to the sensitive content that is included in the text such as drug use, violence, and mass death. This book can be used for upper high school as well, but I believe it would have the most impact for younger high school students.

3. Incorporating this text in the classroom should be done in a sensitive manner and should be done in steps to check students’ individual responses before including it in a group. I think a good way to assess students individually would be to do a short journal entry response to the text and to see how they felt about it. Bringing this into a larger group setting I think projects would be good to incorporate. There are many issues in this book besides that of war and violence that would be good to address like drug use, child slavery (or slavery in general), comparative systems of government, ect. Dividing students into small groups of 3 or 4 to do more research on these different issues and bringing their findings back to the rest of the class would be a good idea. Creating textual connections to the issues in the book but also connecting the issues to other locations in the world or other texts can help give more understanding of global issues. Bringing this to a practical application standpoint, the students could all research areas of the globe or the country in need of some type of assistance. Whether it was a natural disaster, war, or some other tragedy, have students decide on one place as a group and look into practical ways to send help to this place. This could be a food drive, blanket drive, any other way to send assistance to a group of people in need. This could even be done locally at a food shelter or some other local charity.

4. This book is fairly graphic, part of the reason I would not recommend that this text be used in middle school/ Jr. high. Even still, at the high school level I could easily see opposition to this text from both parents and administration for this text’s inclusion of strong violence, war, and substance abuse among other controversial topics. However, I feel that students having knowledge of both the good and the bad in the outside world especially in how it effects children is imperative. This text provides a happy resolution to such a tragic story, but I believe it is important for students to see that war effects children just as much if not more than it does adults. If this can be articulated, then I believe there will not be an issue in bringing it into the classroom.