Ishmael Beah '04

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) has selected Ishmael Beah '04 as a recipient of a 2008 Alex Award for A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier , which debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times best seller list in March 2007. A Long Way Gone chronicles Beah's years as a child soldier in Sierra Leone's civil war, during which his parents were killed and he was forced to carry a gun by age 13.

"I am thrilled to be selected for the Alex Awards and deeply moved to know that my work has had a special appeal to young adults," says Beah. "It is particularly important to me that young people read this work so as to be exposed to the world and to understand the destructive nature of war and violence on the human spirit. Also, for them to know about the remarkable resilience of that same human spirit."

Beah attributes much of his success to Oberlin, where creative writing professors Dan Chaon and Laurie McMillan encouraged him to write. "[Chaon] pushed me to finish, and before I finished college I had a draft of [the book]," Beah says.

"This is a book that has real significance in the larger world," says Chaon, who worked with Beah for two years. "Students can look at this and say, 'Wow, writing can make a difference.' Many students dream about writing a book during college, the way Beah did." According to Chaon, those opportunities exist at Oberlin "if students have the desire and willingness to work as hard as Ishmael did."

The Alex Awards were created with the knowledge that many teens enjoy and often prefer books written for adults, and to assist librarians in recommending such books to teens. The award is named for the late Margaret Alexander Edwards, a young adult specialist at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. She used adult books extensively with young adults to broaden their experience and enrich their understanding of themselves and their world.

"I hope this award will serve as an invitation for more young adults to read and see it as a journey, [a way to] grow and expand their thinking about this world that we all live in," says Beah.

The Alex Awards became an official American Library Association award in 2002. The winning titles for 2008 were announced January 14 at the American Library Association's Mid-Winter Meeting in Philadelphia.

Related Links Redemption in Words (Oberlin Alumni Magazine, Spring 2007) Memoir by Ishmael Beah ’04 Hits No. 2 on New York Times Best Seller List (Oberlin Online, March 2, 2007) The Making, and Unmaking, of a Child Soldier (The New York Times, January 14, 2007)