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| Hearsay: |
As reader Dan pointed out in yesterday’s thread, the allegations against Ishmael Beah were made by a less-than-reputable tabloid source, and Beah has now defended his book. The entire statement by Beah is copied below:
“For months I told Bob Lloyd and The Australian’s reporter, Shelley Gare, through my publisher, my agent, and my adoptive mother, that unfortunately they were wrong, that the man they claimed was my father was not my father, and that my mother and brothers were not alive, as Lloyd claimed. Last week, when The Australian sent reporters to my home in Sierra Leone, they were forced to acknowledge that this has been a hoax.
“Now The Australian’s reporters are trying to raise questions about the dates in my book, A Long Way Gone, regarding when the war came to my village. They offer as ‘proof’ a man named Mr. Barry who claims to have been the head of the school I attended when I was young. I have never heard of a Mr. Barry. The principal of my school was Mr. Sidiki Brahima.
“The war in Sierra Leone began in 1991. My story, as I remember it and wrote it, began in 1993 when rebels ‘attacked the mining areas’ (my words from the book) in my village while I was away with friends. I never saw my family again. The Australian, presumably, is basing their defamation of me on reports that the Sierra Rutile Mine was closed down by rebels in 1995. But there were rebels in my region, my village, and my life in 1993. They attacked throughout 1993 and 1994 before closing down the mine.
“Others from Sierra Leone can bear witness to the truth of my story. Leslie Mboka, National Chairman of the Campaign for Just Mining in Freetown, was a counselor at Benin Home, the rehabilitation center in Freetown, Sierra Leone, I entered in January 1996. He told this to my publisher, Sarah Crichton, on the telephone today:
‘A gentleman named Wilson was here investigating regarding Ishmael Beah’s book, and I told him emphatically—emphatically—that Ishmael’s accounts are accurate and correct. Wilson was going to Mogbwemo to find out if Ishmael Beah’s family was alive. When he came back to Freetown, he said he couldn’t find anyone alive, and the man who said he was Ishmael’s father was actually just a relative. But then he asked, what about confusion with the dates?
‘And I said, there is no problem with the dates. The rebels made sporadic attacks on the mining communities between ‘93 and ‘94, leading up to and in preparation for the major assault in ‘95. In fact, military personnel were deployed to the area because there were these sporadic raids. Ishmael was caught in one of the earlier attacks.
‘I told all this to Peter Wilson. I told him everything that Ishmael wrote is accurate and completely factual, and I explained to him what was confusing him.
I do not understand what his paper’s agenda is. I do not understand why they are trying to blackmail this brilliant and honest young man.’
“Mboka was contacted by The New York Times when they fact-checked the excerpts of my book which they published. His testimony did not appear in The Australian’s reporting.
“My publisher also spoke today with Alusine Kamara, former director of Benin Home, who now lives in Boston.
‘I have known Ishmael since he was a soldier and he came to our center. I have read his book, and I have no doubt that what he says is true I do not know why anyone would want to question what Ishmael writes about. He did not write a history of the whole war, he wrote about his experiences. And if anyone has any doubts about what Ishmael went through, or what it was like for those soldiers, I refer them to the BBC World—they made many documentaries about our center.’
“I was right about my family. I am right about my story. This is not something one gets wrong. The Australian’s reporters have been calling my college professors, asking if I ‘embellished’ my story. They published my adoptive mother’s address, so she now receives ugly threats. They have used innuendo against me when there is no fact. Though apparently, they believe anything they are told—unless it comes from me or supports my account. Sad to say, my story is all true.”
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January 23rd, 2008 at 8:29 am
I don’t know whether Beah’s story is true or not.
However, the Australian is not a tabloid (although it is owned by Rupert Murcodh).
It is a broadsheet with a strong literary and arts focus.
January 23rd, 2008 at 9:04 am
Another point, which the follow up reports don’t seem to have mentioned, is the Australian reported having received an e-mail during their correspondence with Beah’s guardian which was clearly not written by her (although it was signed with her name) – the grammar was very poor and it was written by someone not fluent in English. The paper does not speculate as to who might have written it, but Beah would be the obvious suspect.
If that’s the case, then someone else must have had a lot of input into the writing of his book – more than just a bit of editorial cleaning up. In itself, this doesn’t render the book factually suspect. But it would indicate that the book was tailored to meet the Western reader’s desire for an unmediated, first-hand account of “Third World” suffering. It would also indicate that Beah did not write his recent statement of defence himself, either, although he probably had input.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:36 am
Regarding the story about the e-mail: If such an e-mail was received I don’t think it is in any way an obvious conclusion that it was written by Beah. He moved to the U.S. nearly ten years ago and did a college degree in English before writing his book. I’ve seen him interviewed on television at length and he is extremely articulate. The assumption that, because English is not his first language, he is incapable of writing a grammatically correct e-mail message strikes me as astonishing.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:11 pm
The Australian is about as far from a tabloid newspaper as you can get. (If anything, it belongs in the same liberal conservatist tradition as the International Herald Tribune.) In 2007 it was named Newspaper of the Year (in Australia) for the second time in three years. As for its arts/letters credentials, it publishes the Australian Literary Review, one of the pre-eminent (and only) stand-alone book review sections in Australia, and has been a long-time sponsor of the Australian/Vogel Literary Award, a competition for unpublished manuscripts that has launched the careers of such writers as Tim Winton and Kate Grenville. The roster of contributing writers to its books section is drawn from all over the world (a salutary example being John Freeman, president of the NBCC, who is a regular contributor), and its focus on the arts is evident to anyone who could be bothered to actually spend two minutes looking at it.
I’m a fan of this site but must say I’m disappointed by the mindless parroting of an imputation so divorced from fact.
January 23rd, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Also, in the interests of fair-mindedness and probity, please see The Australian’s response to Beah’s statement [see link above] (sorry, not sure how to hyperlink):
The Australian’s response to claims by Author Ishmael Beah and his publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux.
Author Ishmael Beah and his publisher Farrar Straus & Giroux have attempted to refute The Australian’s disclosure of major factual errors in his best-selling book “A Long Way Gone.”
But a statement issued by them on Tuesday January 22, which has appeared on various websites http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6524214.html%5E contained several further errors of fact and did not acknowledge that Beah’s account of his time as a child soldier in Sierra Leone is seriously flawed.
The Australian has reported that it found several authoritative adult witnesses in the town of Mattru Jong, including its acting paramount chief Sylvester Basopan Goba and school principal Mr Abdul Barry who confirmed that the attacks on that town and the surrounding region that Beah claims took place in January 1993 actually happened in January 1995.Their statements are backed up by several independently-published historical accounts which are available on the internet for anybody who researches the matter.
That means Beah was a refugee and then child soldier for a combined period of one year, not the three years that he describes in his book. Instead of being a child soldier for two years from the age of 13 he may for instance have been one for two months at 15, which at that time would have been too old to be technically considered a “child soldier” under UN provisions outlawing the use of under-age combatants.
The Australian has believed that those inaccuracies were a result of Beah’s memory being impaired by the trauma, drugs and extreme youth he describes in his book but the latest statement by Beah, who is now 27, and his publisher Sarah Crichton of Farrar, Straus & Giroux seriously misrepresent The Australian’s reporting over the last week.
1. Beah’s statement declared that The Australian had “published my adoptive mother’s address, so she now receives ugly threats.” The Australian did not and would not publish the address of his adoptive mother, Laura Simms. Instead it named her website http://www.laurasimms.com through which she promotes her work as a storyteller.
2. Beah challenged one of the Mattru Jong witnesses quoted by The Australian, Mr Barry, who was a teacher and boarding master at the Centennial Secondary School when Beah went there in the early 1990s. Beah said that Barry “claims to have been the head of the school I attended when I was young… (when in fact) the principal of my school was Mr. Sidiki Brahima.” The Australian actually reported on January 21 that Barry was the boarding school master when Beah attended the school and was not promoted to principal until 2002, long after Beah had left. Beah says he does not know Barry, who has taught since 1979 at the school Beah attended. Barry is adamant that he knows Beah well, identifying him from a photograph and accurately recalling his brother’s name and his parents’ home towns.
3. Beah claimed The Australian interviewed a former social worker in Freetown, Mr Leslie Mboka but “his testimony did not appear in The Australian’s reporting.” Mr Mboka was indeed quoted by The Australian on January 21. Beah’s publisher Sarah Crichton says Mboka told her: “I told (The Australian) everything that Ishmael wrote is accurate and completely factual.” In fact, Mboka told The Australian – and the newspaper reported – that he believed Beah had accurately recorded those events which Mboka had personally witnessed in Freetown in 1996. Mboka further told the newspaper that he had no idea about the veracity of Beah’s version of the original attacks in his home region as Mboka had not been there and had not known Beah at the time. Instead Mboka noted that Beah “as a young child who had been through terrible things so he could easily have got things mixed up”.
4. In Beah’s statement, Crichton also quoted Alusine Kamara, a former director of one of the Freetown rehabilitation camps where Beah was sent in 1996, as saying: “I have known Ishmael since he was a soldier and he came to our center. I have read his book, and I have no doubt that what he says is true.” In fact, like Mboka, Kamara did not know Beah at the time of the attack on Mattru Jong. Crichton has not named any witnesses who can support Beah’s claim that the invasion of Mattru Jong that he describes in detail happened in 1993 rather than in 1995, when many witnesses say that same attack happened.
5. Beah said in his statement that: “The Australian, presumably, is basing their defamation of me on reports that the Sierra Rutile Mine (in his hometown) was closed down by rebels in 1995. But there were rebels in my region, my village, and my life in 1993. They attacked throughout 1993 and 1994 before closing down the mine.” The Australian did not base its reports on the fact that the mine was invaded in 1995. The most definitive evidence is his first-hand account of witnessing the rebel invasion and occupation of Mattru Jong, which was not invaded until 1995. In his account he accurately described the route of the attack (which caught the townspeople by surprise), the fact that a Catholic priest was first sent into the town with a warning, the fact that soldiers defending the town left just before the attack, and the fact that the rebels accidentally left open an escape route from the town on a single footpath through a swamp. All of those events happened in 1995, not 1993. While The Australian confirmed that information with interviews in Mattru Jong, all those details are available on the internet.
The Australian has insisted throughout its coverage that it believes that Beah suffered a terrible ordeal during his country’s civil war. However a book sold to hundreds of thousands of readers as non-fiction should accurately recount that ordeal.
Speaking for myself, I’d have to do a fair bit of digging before coming down on one side or the other, but it’s reasonably clear that the asserted facts are reasonably contested.
January 24th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
Kate, one half of my family is from a “Third World” village background, so I don’t look down on people for lacking English language fluency. But I also know that it can be a long haul – much more than ten years – especially if your childhood educatoin was cut short, as Beah’s was.
There can also be a large gap between spoken and written fluency, and people who are very verbally articulate can have very poor written skills – I’ve seen it in a lot of student essays. And sadly there are plenty of people with college education who still lack written English language fluency. Whether Beah does or not, I don’t know, but being verbally fluent and having a college degree doesn’t preclude it.
I am interested in the way that the market seems to demand that “exotic” stories be rendered according to a familiar style and formula, yet be unmediated. Leaving asie the issue of Beah for a moment, such stories don’t generally come packaged up in a form that is accessible to Western readers – so they are not heard.
February 2nd, 2008 at 7:34 am
I also notice that Dan Chaon, Ishmael Beah’s creative writing teacher who seems to have played a major role in the writing of his book, has said elsewhere that he is “writing to every website and blog that chose to link to the article in The Australian about Ishmael Beah.”
That does raise the question of whether “reader Dan”, who claimed that the Australian was a tabloid of ill repute, was in fact Dan Chaon – someone with a very clear personal stake in the story. I’d like “reader Dan” to clarify this issue.
February 3rd, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Thanks for posting this thoughtful discussion. The Australian has raised legitimate and overdue concerns about “A Long Way Gone.”
But you don’t have to agree with the newspaper to question Beah’s memories. You just need to read the book closely. Some of its scenes are hard to believe. For example, on page 95, Beah says that he and friends “lay in the dirt” on a coffee farm near a ruined village and eavesdropped on rebels who played cards and chatted “for hours.” Beah says he heard a rebel say that his group had just burned three villages:
“Another rebel, the only one dressed in full army gear, agreed with him. ‘Yes, three is impressive, in just a few hours in the afternoon.’ He paused, playing with the side of his G3 weapon. ‘I especially enjoyed burning this village. We caught everyone here. No one escaped. That is how good it was. We carried out the command and executed everyone. Commander will be pleased when he gets here.’ He nodded, looking at the rest of the rebels, who had stopped the game to listen to him. They all agreed with him, nodding their heads. They gave each other high fives and resumed their game.”
How could Beach and his friends have been close enough to overhear the conversation in such detail yet avoid detection “for hours” by the rebels?
Janice Harayda
One-Minute Book Reviews
February 4th, 2008 at 4:02 am
I have enjoyed this reasoned and intelligent discussion. I for one am more that usually peaked about this man, Beah, purporting to speak on behalf of the UN, WHO who has set up a foundaction in his own name, has made a million dollars from his litereary hoax, and who has the gaul to blame The Australian for a crusade against him. Even now, apparently, crowds still applaud this poor’child’ for all the trauma he has been through (and still is subjected to). When is the community that has been propoping him up going to tell him what has been incontrovertably revealed, that he is a fraud, milking the system for his own advantage.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:46 am
1.) Oberlin College isn’t some back-alley place, it’s one of the top schools in America. Ishmael Beah can write an email.
2.) Um, I don’t think Beah’s lying, but even if his story is exaggerated, he was still a soldier (15 is still a child to me, too, so “child soldier” seems to be pretty accurate) and he still lived through a civil war.
3.) This all started from some dude who claimed–lied–and said he was Beah’s father. Don’t you think that publishers, having worked closely with a young man who had suffered so much (once again, 2 months as a child soldier is still 2 months as a child soldier) would want to protect him from stuff like crazy strangers trying to claim they’re related?
I don’t know why the Australian is doing this if it’s not true. But it could be that neither side is right in this. First hand accounts are still being pitted against first hand accounts, research and lack there of are sloppy no matter what. We’re talking about a refuge kid who’s information isn’t exactly a priority.
March 18th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Meaning it can be easily misplaced, mis-labeled and misunderstood.
February 2nd, 2009 at 8:37 am
Beah’s book is entitled “memoirs” of a boy soldier. Memory, in the best of cases, is never perfect.
So what is all this fuss about?
Does anyone claim that Beah is fabricating the entire story?
Does anyone claim that if any single detail of the story is inaccurate, then the entire story is false?
Beah’s book is one of the most compelling stories I have read in decades.
If only one half of the details he relates are 100% factually “accurate”, then Beah’s memory is probably above average.
If only one half of the details he relates are 100% factually “accurate”, then Beah and any other victim of these horrific events fully deserves fully deserves some financial reward merely for surviving.
I truly wish this story was fictitious. That would mean that the world is a better place than it really is.
April 30th, 2010 at 3:25 am
i am in complete agreement with #12 pierro’s comment. And for all the ishmeal’s and ishmealettes in the world, we need to get our acts together. These horrors and others like them are and should be maintained completely unacceptable ;eriod!!!!!
April 30th, 2010 at 3:27 am
oops sorry thats period!!!!!
January 6th, 2011 at 12:42 am
I just don’t understand why you people care so much about factuality. What GOOD does it do for anyone but your ego, in denying
Ishmael’s story?! And FNL: Why are you spending so much time and effort on this? Don’t you have better things to do?
May 9th, 2011 at 6:13 am
i totally agree with number 12. can you cut him some slack , he just survived a war as a kid, so leav him in peace
May 28th, 2011 at 4:09 pm
Like 12 said, even if only half of the stuff is entirely accurate, his memory would still be better than most. War was probably traumatizing, and the only reason people don’t believe him is because they’ve never experienced anything near as terrible as the war explained in the book. Bad things go on, these people just don’t get that.
February 29th, 2012 at 6:13 pm
I dont know who you think you are to say that Ishmael is lying about his experiences and about what happened to him was not true. Its not like you were there and saw it with your own eyes. How would you feel if you had to do all the stuff he did as a child soldier and then some guy comes along and says your wrong and it didnt happened? And like #15 said if it were true about the rumors then why would you even waste time and judge him? Dont you have other things to do?