Ishmael Beah
Ishmael Beah
Ishmael Beahis a Sierra Leonean author and human rights activist who rose to fame with his acclaimed memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. His most recent novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, was published in January 2014...
NationalitySierra Leonean
ProfessionAutobiographer
Date of Birth23 November 1980
CityMattru Jong, Sierra Leone
came changed english equivalent
My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly'; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides.'
handicap haunt transform wash
A lot of people, when they say 'forgive and forget,' they think you completely wash your brain out and forget everything. That is not the concept. What I think is you forgive and you forget so you can transform your experiences, not necessarily forget them but transform them, so that they don't haunt you or handicap you or kill you.
context destroy family happened happens order war
What happens in the context of war is that, in order for you to make a child into a killer, you destroy everything that they know, which is what happened to me and my town. My family was killed, all of my family, so I had nothing.
child constantly rights
As a child soldier, your rights are constantly violated.
exhausting speaking
It's exhausting writing nonfiction, particularly when it's personal. It's tiring, always speaking about things that are not necessarily fun retelling.
pain sky confusion
In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.
stars night sky
Some nights the sky wept stars that quickly floated and disappeared into the darkness before our wishes could meet them.
moon strive
We must strive to be like the moon
moon please-me childhood
I get a chance to observe the moon now, I still see those same images I saw when I was six, and it pleases me to know that that part of my childhood is still embedded in me.
pain awakening be-careful
This days one must be careful to avoid awakening the pain of another.
journey ends my-journey
ONE OF THE UNSETTLING THINGS about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end.