Book Being Reviewed:
Beah, I. (2007). A long way gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Reviewer:
Danielle Richards

Genre:
Memoir/Biography

Subject Headings:
Grief & loss, Multicultural/cross-cultural issues, PTSD, Racial/ethnic identity, Racial/ethnic politics, Social justice, War

Review:
A Long Way Gone is a memoir written by the former child soldier, Ishmael Beah. In the 1991 Civil War in Sierra Leone, Beah lost his family at the age of twelve and survived among horrific violence as a wandering refugee. One year later, Beah was forced to become a child solider. At sixteen, UNICEF removed him from the fighting and he entered a rehabilitation center for boy soldiers. During his eight month rehabilitation program, his counselor Esther, played a vital role in helping him with his flashbacks, nightmares, drug withdrawal and facing the violence he had experienced and inflicted on others. Beah has now established the Ishmael Beah Foundation which is dedicated to helping former child soldiers reintegrate into society and improve their lives. He is involved with the Human Rights Watch Children’s Division Advisory Committee, has spoken before the United Nations, serves as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, and is doing other work to bring to light the effects of war on children.

This book may be useful for counselors and counselors-in-training who work or plan to work with refugees and immigrants. It is an appropriate text for a multicultural counselor education course. It is also relevant to those who are interested in personal accounts of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The relationship between Beah and his counselor at the rehabilitation center is a good example of the enactment of Carl Rogers’ core conditions of unconditional positive regard, empathy and genuineness. Overall, Beah’s memoir is a moving, disturbing and hopeful book.

Originally posted on 1/6/2010 at csi-net.org