Truth and fiction: Or, orature and witnessing in Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone

Abstract

The publication in 2007 of Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone, which sold more than 62,000 copies within a few months, etched Sierra Leone in the global consciousness. The book’s popularity and wide circulation provoked a critical response from The Australian newspaper, which used its understanding of non-fiction to challenge the veracity of Beah’s version of the civil war, as well as the story’s time line. This article argues that Beah’s multiple cultural affiliations situate him within a generically hybrid space that enables him to draw on western and non-western rhetorical traditions, especially Mende storytelling and other closely related narrative conventions. These allow the writer to negotiate successfully the space between fact and form, and add a new dimension to human rights witnessing. Critics have often failed to address adequately the implications of this multilayered composition.