Reddit reviews A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
We found 18 Reddit comments about A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Great product!
I mean Sierra Leon's govt/rebels used 10-12 year olds as their front line fighters for years.
One of them watched his buddy get hit by a RPG and kept fighting. His memoirs can be found in a A Long Way Gone
There's a really good book about almost this very subject: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier.
The TL;DR version: Sierra Leone's civil war destroys a young boy's village, and, after a period of wandering as a refugee, he is forced into the army. At 15, he's rescued by UNICEF—and is sent to a rehabilitation center where he undergoes the difficult process of "repatriation" back into civilian life. When war reaches him a second time, he escapes to the U.S.
So, essentially, there are international organizations who dedicate resources to save and de-program child soldiers. The U.S. military would hand the child over to the UN, and then he would be subsequently placed into a relevant program.
> Вот только левацкой мрази из ООН на это наплевать и ничто на этот счет сделано не будет.
> More than 100,000 children have been released and reintegrated into their communities since 1998 in over 15 countries affected by armed conflict. In 2010 alone, UNICEF supported the reintegration of some 11,400 children formerly associated with armed forces and armed groups along with 28,000 other vulnerable children affected by conflict.
> Since the mid-1980s, UNICEF and its partners have advocated for, and secured the release of, children from armed forces in conflict-affected countries including Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mozambique, Nepal, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Uganda.
https://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58007.html
Про Сьерра Леону есть достаточно интересные воспоминания бывшего мальчика-солдата, который прошел через реабилитационный лагерь ООН.
I think you've got the title of the last one wrong.
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah is the autobiographical story of a (male) child soldier in Sierra Lione.
It looks like your teachers are going for a world lit kind of vibe - three of these books are about black Africans, one about Chinese-American women, one about Hatian women, and one about Jews during the Holocaust. While there are a number of female protagonists, it seems more likely that this was a side effect of trying to give you a (limited) view of world literature.
There's a ton of cookie cutter quotes that I could throw out your way here...but none of them would cover exactly what I'm trying to say...so here goes...
Our capacity for pain and loss...our ability to recover from trauma and damage, is limitless. Just as is our capacity for love and joy.
If it was not, there are many "great" people who would never have attained that lofty title...Otto Frank, The Dhali Lama, Ishmael Beah, not to mention all the day to day heroes, whose will to go on, and to keep pushing, and keep striving, show a resilience not only of mind, but spirit and heart as well.
That may feel like a comparison....saying your pain, or your loss is not as great as many other people, and look what they have accomplished....and to be honest, to an extent, it is. It is not, however, intended to belittle your loss, as each loss is different, as is each person carrying that loss. It is intended to say this.....the option to live and love greatly still exists, and it exists for you. You are the only person in the entire world, that can prevent yourself from grabbing life, and savoring it to the fullest....from finding love, and happiness, and pure joy again. It simply requires you to commit EVERYTHING you are, back to the cause. If you hold back, if you hide away that part of you that's hurt so badly, you only do a disservice to yourself.
I believe you will find this life one day..that you will rediscover true joy, and love. Yes, you may suffer another loss someday, and yes it will hurt, but once you've found your way back to the path once, it becomes easier again, and again. This is the secret that those "great" people hold......"There is no loss, that cannot, with time, be healed; There is no spirit, that is better for remaining isolated; and there is no heart, that is made whole again, without love"
Because it is lazy activism. Anyone that really cared about topics like Kony knew about it without having to be taught by a video whored around social networks. I remember when this came out the author made the talk show rounds, even appearing on the Daily Show a few years ago talking about the horrible plight of child soldiers. Some people got upset for a few months then it died down, most likely not making any difference.
If television or Facebook is what it takes to get you socially active you probably aren't that committed. You need to be more in touch with the world and the issues you are interested (and hopefully able to make a difference) in.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
You know, I was honestly hoping that you'd be wrong. I accept that it's a different style of game. But hell, if it's going to be heavily story based, make it internally consistent.
I get that it's a story, that dramatic tension is the name of the game. But so much of it was so very poorly done and painfully forced to increase dramatic tension, that the immersion was not broken so much as non-existent. The video posted above of snowy new-york was a little better in this regard, but not by a ton. Overall I don't have particularly high hopes for this game, even though I love story-heavy games in general.
Also, to gain some further insight on child soldiers, as well as the situation in war-torn countries where said soldiers are used A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Child Soldier is pretty informative and a good read. That kid would be coked up, brainwashed and trigger happy, and commanded to kill white people on site as often as not.
https://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374531269
(the author didn't rape anyone but killed a ton of people. it's a fucking wild story)
A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007) by Ishmael Beah. Firsthand account of Beah's time as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone (1990s) The last few pages, I just read one per day, an effort to delay the inevitable ending of a good book. *edited link from wiki to amazon
I don't get upset by any of it because if I did I would be upset by all of it and wouldn't be able to function. I read this book http://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374531269/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1311457412&sr=1-1 and it made me care too much so I made a decision to not care at all as crass as that sounds.
Any book by Mary Roach- her books are hilarious, random, and informative. I like Jon Krakauer's, Sarah Vowell's, and Bill Bryson's books as well.
Some of my favorites that I can think of offhand (as another poster mentioned, I loved Devil in the White City)
No Picnic on Mount Kenya
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Collapse
The Closing of the Western Mind
What is the What
A Long Way Gone
Alliance of Enemies
The Lucifer Effect
The World Without Us
What the Dog Saw
The God Delusion (you'd probably enjoy Richard Dawkins' other books as well if you like science)
One Down, One Dead
Lust for Life
Lost in Shangri-La
Endurance
True Story
Havana Nocturne
I have a quick trigger finger on Amazon... haha. Have you read A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah - pretty amazing story.
If anyone wants a perspective of what it was like to be a child growing up during the civil war in Sierra Leone check out the book "A Long Way Gone." Crazy crazy stuff you don't hear much about.
You probably should read some literature on child soldiers and how they are 'conscripted' and how they are forced to fight in wars. I recommend A Long Way Gone (a memoir of Ishmael Beah an ex-child soldier) and They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children (by Romeo Dellaire).
One method is to use their culture against them, as in they will force you to kill your mother or else they will kill all you or your brother. Then they are taught to believe they are not wanted anymore and they will be killed by their own tribe. This has parallels with gang recruitment. Once this stuff happens in order to reverse this behaviour you need to retrain the individual and attempt to reverse the mindset that they are soldiers or the like and not locking them up in prison.
These are the books we read in my Africa in Popular Media and African History classes in college. I highly recommend all of them:
They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky
God Grew Tired of Us
A Long Way Gone
A Continent for the Taking
Black Hawk Down
Country of My Skull
Kaffir Boy
Machete Season: the Killers in Rwanda Speak
The Graves Are Not Yet Full
An Ordinary Man
It's not like Castle Wolfenstein, we don't have to go through every underling to get to the boss fight.
I recommend this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374531269/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331348848&sr=1-1-spell
Frugal because even when this is not on sale, it's already cheap, and when it's used, it's only a penny before shipping!