Lost Boys of South Sudan was a name given to the thousands of young boys orphaned or torn from their families by the Sudanese Civil War. These young boys walked sometimes as much as a thousand miles to reach refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. The US allowed as many as 4000 Lost Boys to emigrate to America providing them with endless opportunities. Gia Nyok and Lopez Lomong were able to reach prominence in America and help their communities in Sudan despite the struggles they endured as Lost Boys.
Gai Nyok rose through the ranks of average Americans to become a diplomat in the State Department. Gai grew up in Abang, a village in South Sudan. At the age of 5 he fled his village and trekked 1000 miles to a refugee camp in Ethiopia where he “was given the opportunity for an education, an experience that would help him see a brighter future,”
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In the camp Gai encountered refugees from different nationalities “I was exposed to international issues.” and saw the conflict between them and wanted to solve the issues (‘Lost Boy’). It was in the refugee camp that he decided to pursue a job in international diplomacy. He was admitted to the U.S. in 2001 and adopted by a family. Many Lost Boys are older than 18 and are not fortunate enough to get a family to help them adjust to life in America. These young men have difficulty adapting to life in the US because many suffer from PTSD coming from their journey to refugee camps. On their long journeys they were attacked by wild animals, and even worse, hunted by human soldiers who would not risk the chance that the boys would become child soldiers for the resistance. When Gai arrived in America he
This psychological memoir is written from the eyes of Ishmael Beah and it describes his life through the war and through his recovery. War is one of the most horrific things that could ever happen to anyone. Unwilling young boy soldiers to innocent mothers and children are all affected. In most instances the media or government does not show the horrific parts of war, instead they focus on the good things that happen to make the people happy and not cause political issues. In his book A Long Way Gone, Ishmael Beah dispels the romanticism around war through the loss of childhood innocence, the long road of emotional recovery and the mental and physical affects of war.
The novel, Farewell to Manzanar, by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, tells her family’s true story of how they struggled to not only survive, but thrive in forced detention during World War II. She was seven years old when the war started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942. Her life dramatically changed when her and her family were taken from their home and sent to live at the Manzanar internment camp. Along with ten thousand other Japanese Americans, they had to adjust to their new life living behind barbed wire. Obviously, as a young child, Jeanne did not fully understand why they had to move, and she was not fully aware of the events happening outside the camp. However, in the beginning, every Japanese American had questions. They wondered why they had to leave. Now, as an adult, she recounts the three years she spent at Manzanar and shares how her family attempted to survive. The conflict of ethnicities affected Jeanne and her family’s life to a great extent.
As Garbarino recognizes, the effects of war and such violence is something that sticks with a child and remains constant in their everyday lives. The experiences that children face involving war in their communities and countries are traumatic and long lasting. It not only alters their childhood perspectives, but it also changes their reactions to violence over time. Sadly, children are beginning to play more of a major role in wars in both the United States and other countries.... ...
The 6th Street Boys were the gang that Goffman spent six years in Philadelphia with, and who she wrote her book about. While Goffman mainly focuses on a handful of the 6th Street Boys, one could assume that the gang consisted of almost every young male who lived on, or near the block. Everyone who she encountered during her time living in this neighborhood was an African- American, and this includes the young men who were in the gang. This being said, however, the gang lets Goffman become a “member” and even give her a nickname. This leads us to believe that the 6th Street Boys allowed women who lived on the block, and their girlfriends who may not have lived on the block to join the gang as well, but not as on official 6th Street Boys member,
Currently, best estimates are that over one-half of the world's refugee population, or over 20 million, are children.1 Human Rights Watch, a watchdog non-governmental organization, estimated that in 1990 over 8,500 children, 70 percent of whom were unaccompanied, reached United States shores.2 While this figure is small relative to the total world estimate of child refugees, the lack of systemic or comprehensive United States governmental policies specifically geared toward assessing the asylum claims of children and their circumstances has become increasingly problematic. Continued human rights violations in China, worldwide genocide - as seen in Bosnia in the early 1990s and currently in Kosovo - and persistent civil wars in Sri Lanka and parts of Africa, have resulted in an increase of t...
While some children and adults are able to escape the wrath of the LRA, many are hurt, persecuted and forgotten about every year, by the group’s tactics. Children are taken during raids in villages near the borders of Uganda, Sudan, Congo, and the Central African Republic. The men are usually killed and the women flee, are killed, or trafficked. These raids are usually carried out by “child soldiers much younger than their victims,” where they are forced to kill possible relatives and kidnap other children. The male children that are taken are usually forc...
In 1992, the conflict of the Sudanese Civil War resulted in the mass migration of thousands of Sudanese boys. This huge group of children were without adult supervision and care, and they travelled a total of one thousand miles through the Sahara desert. Many of them died of starvation and exposure during their journey. They were given the name the Lost Boys.
“Boys” by Rick Moody summarizes the life journey of two stereotypical boys and how they gain power from the experiences they face. The boys face both positive experiences and tragedies that impacts their amount of power. In the short story, the author is conveying the idea that as the boys mature they obtain more power. He shows this through the literary devices conflict, tone, and repetition.
...it may help us arrive at an understanding of the war situation through the eyes of what were those of an innocent child. It is almost unique in the sense that this was perhaps the first time that a child soldier has been able to directly give literary voice to one of the most distressing phenomena of the late 20th century: the rise of the child-killer. While the book does give a glimpse of the war situation, the story should be taken with a grain of salt.
In “A Long Way Gone”, we follow a twelve-year-old African boy, Ishmael Beah, who was in the midst, let alone survived a civil war in Sierra Leone, that turned his world upside down. Ishmael was a kind and innocent boy, who lived in a village where everybody knew each other and happiness was clearly vibrant amongst all the villagers. Throughout the novel, he describes the horrific scenes he encounters that would seem unreal and traumatizing to any reader. The main key to his survival is family, who swap out from being related to becoming non-blood related people who he journeys with and meets along his journey by chance.
Lost boy is a follow up to Dave Pelzer’s book A Child Called It. This Novel Is a Auto-biography by Dave Pelzer. It follows his experiences in the foster care system. After being taken from his mother Dave goes from one foster home to another and he describes his life there.
Taylor, Rupert. “The Plight of Child Soldiers.” Suite 101. Media Inc., 11 May 2009. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. .
In the short story “Chickamauga”, the author Ambrose Bierce uses a young boy to connect to his audience with what is the disillusions of war, then leads them into the actuality and brutalities of war. Bierce uses a six year old boy as his instrument to relate to his readers the spirits of men going into combat, then transferring them into the actual terrors of war.
The fictional life and death of a twelve year old little boy named Robert is vividly articulated in this moving tale by Thomas Wolfe. The reader learns of the boy’s life through four well developed points of view. The reader’s first glimpse into Robert’s character is expressed through a third person narrative. This section takes place on a particularly important afternoon in the boy’s life. The second and third views are memories of the child, through the eyes of his mother and sister. His mother paints the picture of an extraordinary child whom she loved dearly and his sister illustrates the love that the boy had for others. Finally, an account from the narrator is given in the ending. It is in the last section of this work that the narrator attempts to regain his own memories of his lost brother.
Growing up as a boy naturally comes with a lot of pure pressure and competition. From Magazine ads to television shows the male always has to be macho and protect his family.