Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Long Way Gone:
memoirs of a boy soldier
Ishmael Beah
2007
This is a memoir of a boy in Sierra Leone who fought in a guerrilla war for two years as a teenager before making it to New York.
The book is gripping and quick to read. The stories are shocking and the narrative is real and emotional. It's a world so far disconnected from anything I've known that it fails to resonate deeply. That's my shortcoming though, not the books. It move from one tragic event to another so rapidly that it almost becomes formulaic. Is it important to read books about such wildly different life experiences? What is gained by the awareness brought by this book? It makes me humbled, privileged. It doesn't spur me to act (again, my shortcoming, not the book). The book has to be shocking or no one will read it. But, as shocking as it is, by being published in the book, it becomes just another part of the mass of real and outrageous literature and film that is always being produced. It makes me feel guilty, not for my privilege, but because the massive loss of life and suffering has served to augment my worldliness and make me feel I'm more aware. The story, I think, was cheapened. The book was riveting, but I can't help feeling that is was reduced to typical exploitive shock journalism by being published. I don't know. It made me feel a lot. It made me aware, and it gave the author power.
memoirs of a boy soldier
Ishmael Beah
2007
This is a memoir of a boy in Sierra Leone who fought in a guerrilla war for two years as a teenager before making it to New York.
The book is gripping and quick to read. The stories are shocking and the narrative is real and emotional. It's a world so far disconnected from anything I've known that it fails to resonate deeply. That's my shortcoming though, not the books. It move from one tragic event to another so rapidly that it almost becomes formulaic. Is it important to read books about such wildly different life experiences? What is gained by the awareness brought by this book? It makes me humbled, privileged. It doesn't spur me to act (again, my shortcoming, not the book). The book has to be shocking or no one will read it. But, as shocking as it is, by being published in the book, it becomes just another part of the mass of real and outrageous literature and film that is always being produced. It makes me feel guilty, not for my privilege, but because the massive loss of life and suffering has served to augment my worldliness and make me feel I'm more aware. The story, I think, was cheapened. The book was riveting, but I can't help feeling that is was reduced to typical exploitive shock journalism by being published. I don't know. It made me feel a lot. It made me aware, and it gave the author power.
# posted by mz @ 12:16 PM 
