Book Details
- Author: Emmanuel Jal
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press (2009)
- Category: Biography
Discerning Reader Editorial Review
Reviewed 01/06/2009 by Jacob Hantla.
Recommended. You will not be unaffected by this tragic and touching narrative.
Born in Tonj, South Sudan in approximately 1980, all that Jal Jok (later renamed Emmanuel Jal) knew was civil war. By the time that most children around the world are learning to swing on monkey bars and play sports, he had seen family members raped and murdered, lost his father to an army position, survived a waterless and foodless trek across the desert, lived through life in a refugee camp, and entered war as gun-toting jenajesh. Short on manpower and wanting to equip and train the next generation, the SPLA army in Sudan trained children to fight in a brutal war that has ravaged Sudan for decades and claimed an entire generation. War Child is the autobiography of one of those jenajesh, one of the lost boys of Sudan. It is the story of a boy trained to hate and kill, who found his way out of hatred to the God of his mother - Jesus Christ - and learned to love. This transformation headed Jal down a path of music culminating in international renown, as a hiphop artist pleading with his people and the world to help bring peace to his homeland in Sudan.
I could not put the book down, reading the entire thing in just three days, despite being a slow reader. The horrific reality of the day-to-day life (and mostly death) of the Sudanese civil war and its effects on both the armies and the civilians is clearly portrayed - not inappropriately or even for shock value - through the memory of a young child who lived it. It is probably too much for children to handle, so be discerning; at times it is too much for even adults to bear and you are bound to find your emotions regularly overwhelmed. Genocide, war, statistics are all horribly abstract terms that don't affect my mind and don't affect my prayers and efforts as they should. But stories affect us. This story is one that should be told and it should affect us. This story is especially important to be told because it is one that represents millions whose stories we won't read.
I highly recommend War Child. You will not go away unaffected. I pray that Sudan would not be unaffected.
