Ishmael Beah

I really enjoyed listening to Ishmael speak. I feel like it brought even more reality to the story because I actually got to see and hear him in person. I really enjoyed Ishmael's book even though it was extremely gruesome. The only part of the book I did not like was the ending because I was so interested in knowing the details of his life after he got away from the war and moved to New York City. At first when he started speaking he simply retold the book and made his long story short. I was really worried he was not going to tell about his life after the book. Luckily he did! I found out that Ishmael went to high school in NYC and it was very hard for him to accommodate to such a different life as well as deal with all the kids asking him questions about his past. He learned to deal with things by keeping his past out of his life and only after two years of high school he went to college where they told him he needed more education before he would be excepted. He finally got into a college and it was in Ohio. He received a graduates degree in political science. In college, Ishmael discovered his interest in writing. In his second year of college he took a creative writing class and because of that class he decided to start writing about his horrible past. His professor helped him. During that time Ishmael had no friends and he was very depressed because it was hard for him to look back at his past life since he had been hiding it for so long. Ishmael stopped writing many times but the suffering children back home pushed him to continue on every time. When he finished the book it was 500 pages and many publishers tried to get him to cut it down to just the story of the war. He refused. He finally found a publisher that wanted to publish it his way and it took three years to do this. Ishmael had a hard time dealing with the media but most of the time he would laugh it off. Through reading this book Ishmael wanted the reader "to discover your own place in this world" (Ishmael 2009). When he said this it really made me think about my place and others as well. Ishmael is an incredibly deep and wise person and is only twenty-eight years old. He has been through more things than most people will go through in there entire lifetime. I am so happy that I got the opportunity to hear him speak and finally relieve myself of the questions I've had since I finished the book. Ishmael has made me so much more grateful of my life and so inspired to find my purpose in this world.