About Ishmael Beah: Ishmael Beah is a Sierra Leonean author and human rights activist who rose to fame with his acclaimed memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. His first novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, was published in January 2014.
The sun's brightness painted our shadows on the ground.
After I wrote my memoir, 'A Long Way Gone,' I was a bit exhausted. I didn't want to write another memoir; I felt that it might not be sane for one to speak about himself for many, many, many years in a row. At the same time, I felt the story of 'Radi...
As a kid in Africa, you were so connected to nature itself because you went farming, watched the moon out at night, observed how the sky was different, and how the birds chanted different songs in the evening and the morning.
Whenever I speak at the United Nations, UNICEF or elsewhere to raise awareness of the continual and rampant recruitment of children in wars around the world, I come to realize that I still do not fully understand how I could have possibly survived th...
There's so much focus and interest about what happens during war, but very little about what happens when people return to homes and communities that have been destroyed. There's a renewal that happens, but it's a very difficult one.
The thing that really gets to me is that countries are in the news only when things get out of hand. That's when it's newsworthy. When the war ends, it's not newsworthy anymore; no one wants to think about it. Actually, the aftermath is the most impo...
