Forum Network

Ishmael Beah tells his story in the new book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. When Beah was a young teenager, his village in Sierra Leone was destroyed, and he was kidnapped by the Sierra Leone army and turned into a child soldier: a drug addicted adolescent with an AK-47, unafraid to kill. Three years later, he and other child soldiers were brought to a UNICEF rehabilitation camp, and he began the long process of regaining his humanity. That process eventually led him to Oberlin College.

This interview first aired on The Sound of Ideas, on 90.3 FM, WCPN, Cleveland, OH