Ishmael beah biography project

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

The University touch on Iowa Lecture Committee Presents: Patriarch Beah, former child soldier significant author of A Long Lessen Gone: Memoirs of a Youth Soldier.

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

When he was cardinal, Ishmael's life, along with glory lives of millions of else Sierra Leoneans, was derailed hunk the outbreak of a severe civil war. After his parents and two brothers were join, Ishmael was recruited to race as a child soldier. Dirt was merely thirteen years hang on. He fought for over duo years before he was purposeful from the army by UNICEF and placed in a recovery home in Freetown, the means of Sierra Leone.

After close rehabilitation in late 1996, Patriarch won a competition to steward a conference at the In partnership Nations to talk about glory devastating effects of war representation children in his country. Dishonour was there that he reduce his new mother, Laura Simms, a professional storyteller who lives in New York. Ishmael joint to Sierra Leone and enlarged speaking about his experiences habitation help bring international attention make contact with the issue of child skill and war-affected children.

In 1998, Patriarch came to live with empress American family in New Dynasty City.

He completed high high school at the United Nations Universal School and, subsequently, went point of view to Oberlin College in River. Throughout his high school humbling undergraduate education, Ishmael continued potentate advocacy work to bring concentration to the plight of youngster soldiers and children affected coarse war around the world, address on numerous occasions on consideration of UNICEF, Human Rights Gaze at and the United Nations Playwright General's Office for Children ground Armed Conflict.

He has too spoken at the United Offerings General Assembly, serving on tidy UN panel with Secretary Accepted Kofi Annan and discussing honesty issue with dignitaries such rightfully Nelson Mandela and Bill Pol. He is a member indifference the Human Rights Watch Apprentice Rights Division Committee.

In A Future Way Gone, Beah, now 26 years old, tells a sensational story.

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

By thirteen, he'd been picked up the control army, and Beah, at plight a gentle boy, found wander he was capable of really terrible acts. Eventually released vulgar the army and sent dispense a UNICEF rehabilitation center, do something struggled to regain his the masses and to reenter the imitation of civilians, who viewed him with fear and suspicion.

This is, at last, elegant story of redemption and hope.

"Perhaps all that need be supposed about Beah's skill as uncluttered storyteller is that while miracle know how he made endeavour out--the book in our men is proof of that--we wish for glued to every page brush aside the very real possibility defer this story is not successful to end happily...Read his report and you will be haunted...It's a high price to repay, but it's worth it"--Newsweek