For the many Oberlin students that might be dissatisfied with the admissions office’s new “fearless” campaign, it’s comforting to know that there are alumni still proving that “one person can change the world.”

    This past weekend, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, OC ’04, debuted at the No. 2 slot on the New York Times’ Best Seller list. When one learns his horrific story, it’s easy to understand the memoir’s immediate success. 

    As a 12-year-old, Beah was brainwashed into becoming a child soldier by the rebel army in Sierra Leone’s civil war. With his AK-47, a tortured and drugged Beah killed anyone the army instructed him to kill until UNICEF workers rescued him at age 16.

    Last night, Beah read passages from his book and conducted a question-and-answer session at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lynwood, OH. Despite the media frenzy surrounding him and his current whirlwind book tour, it’s clear that Beah hasn’t forgotten his fond memories of his alma mater. Upon welcoming the crowd, he publicly acknowledged the group of approximately 20 Oberlin students who traveled for almost an hour to attend the reading.  He also expressed his profound gratitude for Oberlin College’s creative writing professor Dan Chaon. “He pushed me to finish this book,” Beah said. “I still consider myself to be a student of his.”

    Beah introduced his novel with an objective that might seem strange for someone who experienced such extreme trauma in his homeland: his desire to convey the beauty of pre-civil war Sierra Leone. He explained, “The first time people are introduced to Africa, it’s through conflict…the cameras, the media only wants to focus on Africa when bad things happen…so I tried to show the beauty of that culture.”

    The culture that he speaks of is that of the village in Sierra Leone in which he grew up. As in many parts of Africa, his village stressed the importance of oral tradition. Beah described to the audience how as a child, he and his neighbors would sit around a campfire and listen to stories. They were expected to memorize and recite the stories to other members of the village. He acknowledged that his community’s emphasis on storytelling enhanced his ability to remember details.

    The combination of Beah’s literary prowess and somber subject matter result in a horrific story. To call his account “chilling” would be an understatement. Beah opened his reading with the second chapter of his book: he recounts a nightmare in which he pushes the mutilated body of a villager that he has killed through a field of rotting corpses.

    Upon finishing the passage, Beah explained how easy it is for a person, especially a child, to lose his or her sense of humanity in such dire conditions. “I lost my immediate family [in the war]—my mother, father, and two brothers.  [The rebel army] provides food and shelter and becomes like a family to you.”

    What is extraordinary is that despite his horrific experiences, Beah’s love for Sierra Leone endures.  In fact, Beah returned to his homeland a year ago despite all that he witnessed there. “Regardless, I love my country.  It’s my home, and I always want to go back,” he said.

    Critics across the nation have recognized both the literary achievement and social significance of Beah’s memoir.  In his review for the New York Times, novelist William Boyd wrote that A Long Way Gone is “perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to give a literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the pubescent (or even prepubescent) warrior-killer.”

    However, Beah is well aware of the average American’s minimal knowledge of Africa. To him, revealing the “true” Africa, both good and bad, to the unaware is the first step in eliminating the use of child-soldiers. At the end of his reading, he remarked, “If anyone reads this book and learns that Sierra Leone is an actual country, then I’m happy.”