Ishmael Beah Trauma

shmael Beah’s Journey to Healing A Long Way Home, an autobiography written by Ishmael Beah describes an unthinkable trauma-filled journey of a young boy. From the beginning of the book, twelve-year-old Beah is faced with difficulties when he is forced to flee his small village in Sierra Leone. After which, he wanders the land which is now clouded by war and violence. By the age of thirteen, he was admitted into the government’s army and was made into a boy soldier that committed horrific deeds. Beah was exposed to and committed many offenses such as killing, stealing, and many forms of trauma. After a few long years, sixteen-year-old Beah is taken out of the war by UNICEF and sent to a rehabilitation center. Eventually, Beah is helped to find

Since the start of the book, music had played a notable effect on Beah’s life. This is shown when Beah and his friends had fled from home only bringing their clothes and rap cassette tapes with them. During that time, they used cassettes as an escape from their current reality as young boys caught up in war; “Junior, Talloi, and I listened to rap music, trying to memorize the lyrics so that we could avoid thinking about the situation at hand” (Beah 15). Similarly, the same use of music as an escape came later on, when Beah was located in the rehabilitation center. While taking a questionnaire at the center, Beah mentioned his interest in rap music. This information was seen by Esther, who used it to gain Beah’s trust and help him along the journey to recovery. She did this firstly by distracting him from negative thoughts as shown by his reintroduction to the music during a

At the start of the book when having to flee his village, Beah leaves behind his family, losing them in the chaos. Although searching for and getting close to finding them throughout the book, he tragically never reunites with them. Consequently, Beah found himself searching for a sense of family to make up for the loss. After his removal from the war and rehabilitation process, Beah was reunited with his biological uncle, Tommy, who took him in as his own son. Upon arrival at his new home with his extended family, Beah was greeted with unconditional love and as a brother; “They had all stopped doing their chores and came onto the verandah to hug their "brother," as my uncle explained my relation to them” (Beah 177). Through this, he regained a sense of family, allowing him to continue healing before Uncle Tommy’s eventual sickness and death. With the passing of his uncle, Beah felt as if living in the town was a risk. This was because of his friend Mambu who had to return to the fight because he had no family to take him in. So Beah fled. Eventually, Beah meets Laura Simms, a storyteller in New York when on his to the United Nations to deliver his speech on the war. It is Laura who ultimately adopts Beah after he flees Sierra Leone to the United States. By the end of the story, both his biological family who took him in, and his adoptive mother Laura, helped and supported him along the way to regain