Radiance of Tomorrow
Ishmael Beah, 2014
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
256 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374246020
Summary
A haunting, beautiful first novel by the bestselling author of A Long Way Gone.
When Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone was published in 2007, it soared to the top of bestseller lists, becoming an instant classic: a harrowing account of Sierra Leone’s civil war and the fate of child soldiers that “everyone in the world should read” (The Washington Post). Now Beah, whom Dave Eggers has called “arguably the most read African writer in contemporary literature,” has returned with his first novel, an affecting, tender parable about postwar life in Sierra Leone.
At the center of Radiance of Tomorrow are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in ruins, the ground covered in bones. As more villagers begin to come back, Benjamin and Bockarie try to forge a new community by taking up their former posts as teachers, but they’re beset by obstacles—a scarcity of food; a rash of murders, thievery, rape, and retaliation; and the depredations of a foreign mining company intent on sullying the town’s water supply and blocking its paths with electric wires. z
As Benjamin and Bockarie search for a way to restore order, they’re forced to reckon with the uncertainty of their past and future alike. With the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable, Radiance of Tomorrow is a powerful novel about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—November 23, 1980
• Where—Mogbwemo, Sierra Leone
• Education—B.A., Oberlin College
• Currently—lives in New York New York
Ishmael Beah is a former Sierra Leonean child soldier and the author of the 2007 published memoir, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. His first novel, Radiance of Tomorrow, about the aftermath of that war was published in 2014.
Civil War
Beah was 11 years old when civil war overtook Sierra Leone in 1991. Rebels invaded his hometown of Mogbwemo in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone, forcing Beah to flee. Separated from his family, he spent months wandering south with a group of other boys. At the age of 13, he was forced to become a child soldier, spending the next three years fighting for the government army against the rebels.
Beah says he doesn't remember how many people he killed. He and other soldiers smoked marijuana and sniffed amphetamines and "brown-brown," a mix of cocaine and gunpowder. He blames the addictions and the brainwashing for his violence and cites them and the pressures of the army as reasons for his inability to escape on his own: "If you left, it was as good as being dead."
Rescue and transition
Rescued in 1996 by a coalition of UNICEF and NGOs, Beah went to live with an uncle in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he attended school. That year he was invited to speak at the United Nations in New York. He returned to Sierra Leone, but in 1997 Freetown was overrun by both rebels and the Army, who had since joined forces. With the violence escalating, Beah contacted Laura Simms, whom he had met the year before in New York.
Again, with the help of UNICEF, Beah made his way back to the US. There he lived in New York City with Simms, who became his foster mother, and attended the United Nations International School. He later enrolled in Ohio's Oberlin College, graduating with a Political Science degree in 2004.
Following his 2007 publication of A Long Way Gone, Beah appeared on The Daily Show, telling Jon Stewart that he had found the transition back to civilian life difficult. It was harder to return to society than to become a child soldier, he claimed—because dehumanizing children is a relatively easy task.
Beah credits Nurse Esther, a UNICEF volunteer, with having the patience and compassion required to bring him through the difficult period. She recognized his interest in American rap music and reggae, gave him a Walkman and a Run DMC cassette, and used music as his bridge to his past, his childhood prior to the violence. Slowly, he accepted Esther's assurances that "it's not your fault."
If I choose to feel guilty for what I have done, I will want to be dead myself. I live knowing that I have been given a second life, and I just try to have fun, and be happy and live it the best I can.
Books and recognition
A Long Way Gone was nominated for a Quill Award in the Best Debut Author category for 2007. Time magazine's Lev Grossman named it one of the Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2007, ranking it at #3, and praising it as "painfully sharp", and its ability to take "readers behind the dead eyes of the child-soldier in a way no other writer has."
In 2009, as a 29-year-old, Beah traveled home to Sierra Leone with an ABC News camera, a return that he describes as bittersweet. Later in February, 2013, he traveled to Calgary and spoke at the My World Conference.|
Beah published his first novel in 2014. Radiance of Tomorrow tells of the difficulty of rebuilding a war-torn community for both the victims of violence and its perpetrators. The novel has received wide praise for its compassion and elegant, nuanced style.
Controversy
The accuracy of the events and chronology presented in A Long Way Gone have been called into question, particularly the claim that Beah became a child soldier in 1993, rather than in 1995 as the timeline of events in Sierra Leone's civil war suggests. (Adapted from Wikipedia. 1/12/2014.)
Book Reviews
Written with the moral urgency of a parable and the searing precision of a firsthand account...There is an allegorical richness to Beah's storytelling and a remarkable humanity to his characters. We see tragedy arriving not through the big wallops of war, but rather in corrosive increments.
Sara Corbett - New York Times Book Review
[A] muted, emotionally nimble story of return and rebuilding.... Beah has a resilient spirit and a lyrical style all his own. Even as a multitude of wearying failures mounts, his characters retain their hopefulness in a way that’s challenging and inspiring: “We must live in radiance of tomorrow, as our ancestors have suggested in their tales,” Mama Kadie tells her neighbors. “For what is yet to come tomorrow has possibilities, and we must think of it.... That will be our strength. That has always been our strength.”
Ron Charles - Washington Post
A breathtaking and unselfpitying account of how a gentle spirit survives a childhood from which all innocence has suddenly been sucked out. It's a truly riveting memoir.
Time
Beah has written an actual novel—his first—not about the [Sierra Leon] war itself, but about its aftermath. What happens when those who have committed atrocities or have been the victims of them return to what is left of their homes?... [A] formidable and memorable novel—a story of resilience and survival, and, ultimately, rebirth. —Edwidge Danticat
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Beah, who broke our hearts with the haunting memoir of his life as a boy soldier (Long Way Gone), will render readers speechless with the radiance of his storytelling in this novel of grace, forgiveness, and a vision of a tomorrow without conflict. —Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal
(Starred review.) This first novel from Sierra Leone–born author Beah features characters who face the challenges of returning to normalcy after the horrors of civil war in Sierra Leone. At times, it's hard to discern what predominates, the savagery of war and its aftermath or the promise of the book's title.... Beah writes lyrically and passionately about ugly realities as well as about the beauty and dignity of traditional ways.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. As you read the opening scenes, what did you discover about the reasons Mama Kadie and Pac Moiwa returned to their village, despite the tragedies that occurred there? Do you feel a similar connection to your homeland? How do you feel about your community or homeland?
2. How are the people of Imperi sustained by their relationship to the natural world? When their water supply becomes contaminated, how does this reflect the other contaminations—spiritual, emotional, and physical—of their community?
3. Discuss the role of education in rebuilding Imperi. What fosters the students’ respect for their teachers? How do uniforms and other mandates keep the schools from being truly “public”? Is the principal, Mr. Fofanah, a sinister man or simply a skilled survivor? What accounts for the corruption within the Educational Ministry of Lion Mountain (Sierra Leone)?
4. What choice did Benjamin and Bockarie have when they abandoned teaching in order to work in the mines? How is their friendship affected by their decision? What are the consequences for a society that has essentially no middle class?
5. How did you react to Colonel’s approach to security? For his fellow villagers who survived the atrocities of civil war, what determines the difference between being paranoid and being naïve?
6. How is family life in Imperi distorted by the raiders and the mining company? What do you predict for the “tomorrow” generation of Miata and Abu?
7. What did the novel’s elders teach you about living and leading?
8. Discuss the author’s poetic use of language, which he discusses in the author’s note. What do his colorful images say about the way a community can experience the world?
9. Chapter 8 describes the vulnerability of women as the village itself becomes vulnerable to outsiders. As rape and prostitution rise, parents recall a time when they didn’t fear letting their daughters go out simply to fetch water. How is the power of Imperi’s women transformed throughout the novel?
10. What will be the legacy of villagers like those featured in the novel, even as the modern world threatens to erase their traditions? Is the Western materialism described in the book—from cell phone addiction to flashy cars—ever a positive force?
11. If we read Radiance of Tomorrow as a parable, what is its lesson?
12. F or decades, writers have exposed numerous incidents of devastation wrought by mining. In 2012, particularly shocking headlines appeared when South African police fatally shot more than thirty striking workers during a protest at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana. As consumers, what can we do to become agents for change?
13. Discuss Kula’s tale, which forms the novel’s closing scene. As a reader, how would you describe the necessity of storytelling? How did Radiance of Tomorrow enrich your experience of Ishmael Beah’s memoir, A Long Way Gone?
(Questions issued by publisher.)