One of the reasons writing instructors like me ask our students to read things like Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone is that reading can help us be better writers. Even if the topic is something that doesn't interest us or about which we know nothing, we can learn from the choices the writer makes.
One of the things that stands out to me is that the memoir is made up of many stories that are assembled in a way that tell the "master narrative" of about five years of his life. We learn about his life before the civil war, when he is hiding from the war, when he becomes a boy soldier, when he is "rescued" and how he becomes an advocate for his country and the boy soldiers.
In the chapters we read for this week, Beah is plucked from the army by UNICEF workers who try to rehabilitate him and hundreds of other boy soldiers who fought as members of the army and the rebels. Beah breaks the story of being mustered out of the army, put on a truck and taken to Freetown into several smaller stories. Each of the smaller stories has its own structure (beginning, middle and conclusion) but also fits within the master narrative. In each of the small stories, Beah goes into detail about what he experienced and observed. He also reflects on his reaction to these observations.
He talks, for example, about how clean the UNICEF workers and the MPs are. He interprets this cleanliness to mean they know nothing of the war. They are "sissy civilians."
He makes choices as a writer to repeat his themes about cleanliness and civilians as he writes each of the smaller stories. This helps tie the smaller stories together to give an overall impression of the experience. He doesn't really ever say that he doesn't respect the people who are trying to help him (and doesn't believe they can help him) because they cannot possibly understand him, but I come away with that theme.
This tells me, as a writer, that I must consider the overall themes I am trying to convey to my readers and, rather than do one paragraph on each theme, I might want to consider how using words and ideas consistently will help create an overall affect. For example, in writing about the BSU bed races, I might want to consider how using the idea of getting students "engaged" in the campus can be used to talk about each of the different activities I observed. I could tell several small stories about the Health Center table, the food and beverage giveaways, Charlie Cardinal and the trivia contest. As I tell these stories, I can look for ways to talk about student engagement.
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