Episode Summary
At age twelve, Beah (now twenty-five), fled attacking rebels in his native Sierra Leone and was picked up by the government army. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop?
Participant(s) Bio
Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. He moved to the United States in 1998 and finished his last two years of high school at the United Nations International School in New York. In 2004 he graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in political science. He is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Division Advisory Committee and has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities 9CETO) at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and many other NGO panels on children affected by the war. His work has appeared in Vespertine Press and LIT magazine.
Louise Steinman is curator of the award-winning ALOUD series for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and Co-Director of the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities at USC. She is the author of two books, most recently, The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War, awarded the Gold Medal in Autobiography from ForeWord Magazine and the selection of several all-city and all-freshman reads programs.
Louise Steinman is curator of the award-winning ALOUD series for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and Co-Director of the Los Angeles Institute for Humanities at USC. She is the author of two books, most recently, The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War, awarded the Gold Medal in Autobiography from ForeWord Magazine and the selection of several all-city and all-freshman reads programs.
Credits
