Ishmael Beah | |
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![]() Beah in Cologne, Germany on 28 June 2016 | |
Born | Ishmael Beah 23 November 1980 Mogbwemo, Bonthe District, Sierra Leone |
Occupation | author, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Children Affected by War, human rights activist, former child soldier |
Nationality | Sierra Leonean |
Notable works | A Long Way Gone Little Family Radiance of Tomorrow |
Relatives | Junior Beah Ibrahim Beah (siblings) Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda (wife) |
Ishmael Beah (born 23 November 1980) [1] is a Sierra Leonean author and human rights activist who rose to fame with his acclaimed memoir, A Long Way Gone . [2] His novel Radiance of Tomorrow was published in January 2014. [3] His most recent novel Little Family was published in April 2020. [4]
In 1991, the Sierra Leone Civil War started. Rebels invaded Beah's hometown, Mogbwemo, located in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone, and he was forced to flee. Separated from his family, he spent months wandering south with a group of other boys. At the age of 13, he was forced to become a child soldier. According to Beah's account, he fought for almost three years before being rescued by UNICEF. [1] Beah fought for the government army against the rebels. In 1997, he fled Freetown by the help of the UNICEF due to the increasing violence and found his way to New York City, where he lived with Laura Simms, his foster mother. In New York City, Beah attended the United Nations International School. After high school, he enrolled at Oberlin College and graduated in 2004 with a degree in political science. [1]
Beah says he does not remember how many people he killed during his time in the Sierra Leonean government army. He and other soldiers smoked marijuana and sniffed amphetamines and "brown-brown", a mix of cocaine and gunpowder. He blames the addictions and the brainwashing for his violence [5] and cites them and the pressures of the army as reasons for his inability to escape on his own: "If you left, it was as good as being dead." [6]
During a 14 February 2007 appearance on The Daily Show with host Jon Stewart, Beah said that he believed that returning to civilized society was more difficult than the act of becoming a child soldier, saying that dehumanising children is a relatively easy task. [7] Rescued in 1996 by a coalition of UNICEF and NGOs, he found the transition difficult. He and his fellow child soldiers fought frequently. He credits one volunteer, Nurse Esther, with having the patience and compassion required to bring him through the difficult period. She recognized his interest in American rap music and reggae since he was a kid, gave him a Walkman and a Run DMC cassette, and employed music as his bridge to his past, prior to the violence. Slowly, he accepted her assurances that "it's not your fault." [8]
Living in Freetown with an uncle, he went to school and was invited to speak in 1996 at the UN in New York. When Freetown was overrun by the joined forces of the rebels (RUF or Revolutionary United Front) and Army of Sierra Leone in 1997 (the Army of Sierra Leone was originally fighting against the RUF), he contacted Laura Simms, whom he had met the year before in New York, and made his way to the United States. [8]
"If I choose to feel guilty for what I have done, I will want to be dead myself," Beah said. "I live knowing that I have been given a second life, and I just try to have fun, and be happy and live it the best I can." [6]
In 2009, the 29-year-old traveled home to Sierra Leone with an ABC News camera, a return that he describes as bittersweet. Later in February 2013, he traveled to Calgary and spoke at the My World Conference. [9]
In 2013, Beah married French born Congolese Iranian Priscillia Kounkou Hoveyda. They have three children and live around the world.
A Long Way Gone was nominated for a Quill Award in the Best Debut Author category for 2007. Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2007, ranking it at No. 3, and praising it as "painfully sharp", and its ability to take "readers behind the dead eyes of the child-soldier in a way no other writer has." [10] The book was also included in Amazon's 100 books to read in a lifetime list. [11]
With his novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, Beah explores the life of a community including Benjamin and Bockarie, two friends who return to Bockarie's hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in ruins, the ground covered in bones. Radiance of Tomorrow is said to be 'written with the moral urgency of a parable and the searing precision of a firsthand account'. [12] It earned positive reviews in the New York Times Book Review , [13] The Washington Post , [14] and the Boston Globe . [15]
On January 24, 2020, Beah spoke, together with Romeo Dallaire and Omar Khadr, at a conference at Dalhousie University, on human rights and child soldiers. [16]
In April 2020, Beah published his third book, Little Family. [17] A "deeply affecting novel", [18] Little Family tells the story of five young people living at the margins of society and struggling to replace the homes they have lost with the one they have created together.
Reporting in The Australian , a conservative Australian daily newspaper published by a subsidiary of the Murdoch-owned News Corp, called into question the accuracy of some events and the chronology in A Long Way Gone, particularly the claim that Beah became a child soldier in 1993, rather than in 1995. [19] Beah has defended his account.[ citation needed ] The Chief of Mattru Jong, the village in which Beah lived, confirmed Mattru Jong had been attacked. However, the Chief also stated that Mattru Jong was not attacked in 1993. Other citizens and the boarding master at Beah's school also stated the village was attacked in 1995, not 1993 as Beah claimed.
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It shares its southeastern border with Liberia and is bordered by Guinea to the north. With a land area of 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi), Sierra Leone has a tropical climate and with a variety of environments ranging from savannas to rainforests. According to the 2015 census, Sierra Leone has a population of 7,092,113, with Freetown serving as both the capital and largest city. The country is divided into five administrative regions, which are further subdivided into 16 districts.
The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was a rebel group that fought a failed eleven-year war in Sierra Leone, beginning in 1991 and ending in 2002. It later transformed into a political party, which still exists today. The three most senior surviving leaders, Issa Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao, were convicted in February 2009 of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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Julius Maada Wonie Bio is a Sierra Leonean politician who has served as president of Sierra Leone since 4 April 2018. He is a retired brigadier in the Sierra Leone Army and was the military head of state of Sierra Leone from 16 January 1996 to 29 March 1996, in a military junta government known as the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC).
The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002), or the Sierra Leonean Civil War, was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted almost 11 years, and had over 50,000, up to 70,000, casualties in total; an estimated 2.5 million people were displaced during the conflict.
Ishmael is the first child of Abraham in Abrahamic religions.
Samuel Sam Bockarie, widely known as Mosquito, was a Sierra Leonean politician and army commander who served as a leader of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). Bockarie was infamous during the Sierra Leone Civil War for his brutal tactics, which included amputation, mutilation, and rape. He earned the nickname "Mosquito" for his ability to attack when his enemies were off-guard, mainly during the night. During his service in the RUF, he befriended future Liberian president Charles Taylor, and RUF commander Foday Sankoh. When Sankoh was imprisoned from March 1997 until April 1999, Bockarie served as commander of the RUF in his place.
Brown-brown is a purported form of cocaine or amphetamine insufflation mixed with smokeless gunpowder. This powder often contains nitroglycerin, a drug prescribed for heart conditions, which might cause vasodilation, permitting the cocaine or amphetamine insufflation to move more freely through the body. This, in turn, is believed to allow for a more intense high. The term may also refer to heroin.
Sorie Ibrahim Koroma commonly known as S.I. Koroma was a Sierra Leonean politician, labor activist, and one of the founding members of the All People's Congress political party. He served as first Vice President of Sierra Leone from April 19, 1971, to retirement on November 28, 1985, under president Siaka Stevens.
Mass media in Sierra Leone began when the first modern printing press in Africa arrived at the start of the 19th century. In the 1860s the country became a journalist hub for Africa with professional travelling to the country from across the continent. At the end of the 19th century the industry went into decline and when radio was introduced in the 1930s this became the primary communication media. Print media is not widely read in Sierra Leone, especially outside Freetown, partially due to the low levels of literacy in the country. In 2008 there were 15 daily newspapers in addition to those published weekly. Among newspaper readership young people are likely to read newspapers weekly and older people daily. The majority of newspapers are privately run and are often critical of the government.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier is a 2007 memoir written by Ishmael Beah, an author from Sierra Leone. The book is a firsthand account of Beah's time as a child soldier during the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s. The book describes the change from Beah being an innocent child to being corrupted by war and its effects. The book received positive reception and won several awards. However, some news outlets and historians have claimed parts of the novel do not correlate with historical events and could be inaccurate.
Mattru Jong commonly known as Mattru is the capital of Bonthe District in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone. Mattru Jung is located on the mainland of Bonthe District, along the Jong River, 52 miles southwest of Bo. The town is the seat of Mongerewa Jong Chiefdom, and is the home of Mongerewa Jong Paramount Chief Alie Badara Sheriff III. The town's current estimated population is about 20,000 people. In 2010 it was 8,199, and in the 2004 census the town had a population of 7,647.
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Bockarie Kortu Stevens is a Sierra Leonean diplomat and the current Sierra Leonean Ambassador to the United States; and also Sierra Leone's permanent representative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He is the son of Sierra Leone's first president Siaka Stevens.
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a Constitutional Republic in West Africa. Since it was founded in 1792, the women in Sierra Leone have been a major influence in the political and economic development of the nation.
Literature of Sierra Leone is the collection of written and spoken work, mostly fictional, from Sierra Leone. The coastal west-African country suffered a civil war from 1991 until 2002. Before the civil war, Sierra Leone had many writers contributing to its literature and since the end of the war the country has been in the process of rebuilding this literature. This is an overview of some important aspects of the literature of Sierra Leone before, during, and after the war.
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The other keynote is Ishmael Beah, 39, a former Sierra Leonean child soldier, and Dallaire will also speak, along with Shelly Whitman, an academic expert on children in armed conflict.