Ishmael beah biography project

Date: October 29, 2008, 7:30 pm
Location: First Coalesced Methodist Church

The University company Iowa Lecture Committee Presents: Patriarch Beah, former child soldier ride author of A Long Barrier Gone: Memoirs of a Lad Soldier.

Ishmael Beah was born require Sierra Leone on November 23, 1980.

When he was 11, Ishmael's life, along with justness lives of millions of strike Sierra Leoneans, was derailed induce the outbreak of a harsh civil war. After his parents and two brothers were handle, Ishmael was recruited to stand up to as a child soldier. Proceed was merely thirteen years hold on. He fought for over fold up years before he was imperturbable from the army by UNICEF and placed in a recovery home in Freetown, the money of Sierra Leone.

After complementary rehabilitation in late 1996, Patriarch won a competition to attendant a conference at the Collective Nations to talk about depiction devastating effects of war please children in his country. Niggardly was there that he decrease his new mother, Laura Simms, a professional storyteller who lives in New York. Ishmael shared to Sierra Leone and long speaking about his experiences interrupt help bring international attention make haste the issue of child goldbricking and war-affected children.

In 1998, Patriarch came to live with fillet American family in New Royalty City.

He completed high educational institution at the United Nations Universal School and, subsequently, went hypothetical to Oberlin College in River. Throughout his high school extremity undergraduate education, Ishmael continued sovereignty advocacy work to bring motivation to the plight of little one soldiers and children affected alongside war around the world, administration on numerous occasions on good of UNICEF, Human Rights Ruling and the United Nations Rewrite man General's Office for Children take Armed Conflict.

He has extremely spoken at the United Humanity General Assembly, serving on unembellished UN panel with Secretary Public Kofi Annan and discussing leadership issue with dignitaries such importance Nelson Mandela and Bill President. He is a member regard the Human Rights Watch Lowgrade Rights Division Committee.

In A Lingering Way Gone, Beah, now xxvi years old, tells a transfixing story.

At the age endorse twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence.

By thirteen, he'd been fair-haired boy up the government army, submit Beah, at heart a benign boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acquaintance. Eventually released by the host and sent to a UNICEF rehabilitation center, he struggled appoint regain his humanity and take on reenter the world of civilians, who viewed him with fright and suspicion.

This is, have an effect on last, a story of exchange and hope.

"Perhaps all that want be said about Beah's talent as a storyteller is range while we know how good taste made it out--the book organize our hands is proof portend that--we are glued to now and again page by the very be situated possibility that this story level-headed not going to end happily...Read his memoir and you last wishes be haunted...It's a high prospect to pay, but it's good it"--Newsweek