Shoot the Monkey?

It is unlike me to recommend a book before I’ve read it, but that is exactly what I did with the InterNetwork for Youth’s Readers Club selection for March; A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, by Ishmael Beah (available at any good bookstore, or you may order it from the homepage of the InterNetwork for Youth ( http://www.in4y.com ).

My recommendation was based on seeing Mr. Beah interviewed on the Daily Show. Based on that interview I expected this to be an amazing story. I received my copy on Saturday and read it over the weekend, and was not disappointed.

This is the true story of Mr. Beah’s life during the civil war in Sierra Leone. It begins before he gets caught up in the conflict, follows his life as a boy soldier fighting on the government side from the age of 13 to 15, describes his ‘rehabilitation’, and ends with his escape from Sierra Leone. The book is extremely well written, making his account both compelling and horrifying. The violence he experienced and inflicted is neither glorified nor minimized, he simply presents what happened and allows you to see it through his eyes, which at the time were the eyes of a child.

What struck me most about this book is that it isn’t just the story of a boy soldier in Sierra Leone. It is the story of all children who have to fend for themselves and survive in a world not of their making. I saw in his story the stories of many of the homeless youth I’ve worked with over the years – not that the stories are comparable in content, but that there are so many parallels in the process. The manner in which the child becomes the monster, and the path followed to regaining identity, even humanity – it all seemed very familiar to me. This is Mr. Beah’s story, but there are millions of these stories all over the globe.

I highly recommend this book, and if you read it, you will find in it a parable from Mr. Beah’s childhood. It is a dilemma concerning whether or not to shoot a monkey. His solution to this dilemma carries a powerful message.