The four-star award-winning book, "A Long Way Gone" is a heart-wrenching memoir of a boy soldier (Ishmael Beah) in the time of the Sierra Leone civil war. However, it is sought out to be only half way of a true story.
This year, "A Long Way Gone" was Appalachian State’s freshman required reading. While reading the book, I felt that something was skeptical about Ishmael’s words, but I couldn’t exactly figure out why I felt that way. I never questioned Sierra Leone’s suffering or their civil war happening, but I questioned his “photographic memory” and the perfect detail he used describing horrific events he encountered.
For starters, many characters in Beah’s memoir were interviewed by Sierra Lenonean journalist Muctaru Wurie. They state that countless incidents Beah speaks of never happened.
If you believe The Australian, it turns out that Beah did “grossly exaggerate” his story. Australian journalists investigated Ishmael’s dramatic stories while being a boy soldier, and found out that his claims of being shot in the foot three times with an AK-47, and witnessing six murders; never happened. The beginning of this discovery started when Australian journalists found out Beah’s narrative began “when the rebels attacked Mattru Jong in 1993” when it actually happened in 1995. This was altogether skeptical for many reasons. This is also not to mention that Beah claimed he had to flee his life and live in a unit in 1993 when, in fact, he was in school during that whole period of time. Surviving documents from Beah’s academic career showed he achieved an 84 percent for English and a 99 percent in science. (And most likely a zero percent in history, and 100 percent in creative fictional.) The Australian also pointed out that Beah started out working on his memoir as a fiction, which suggests the embellishments.
In conclusion, Australian reporter Peter Wilson makes a good point. He quotes “I’m sure Beah went through a terrible deal, but the truth matters. It is plain to anyone who wants to look at this objectively that he did not experience what has been sold out as the truth to hundreds and thousands of readers…it sounds naïve, but the shocking thing is: the publishers don’t care about this. They’ve made billions of dollars.” Wilson is exactly right. I believe this a major issue because this has been sold out as the truth to over 3,000 students and faculty at Appalachian State University.
