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E-mail a friendYOUNG VOICES
War Child
Emmanuel Jal is now a world-famous recording artist, but he has been through more to get there than most could endure. Born in Sudan to a middle-class family, when civil war tore his country apart in the early 1980s, Jal soon found himself separated from his family in a huge, crowded refugee camp, surrounded by death, hunger and disease. Later he would become a child soldier, wielding a gun taller than he was, fighting in a war he barely understood.
The details of Jal's upbringing in the ranks of Sudan's child soldiers, before becoming one of the country's "lost boys" are now available in Jal's memoir, War Child, which came out this month. The book is candid, touching and surprisingly frank, a vivid account of war seen through a child's eyes.
Wars raging in Africa are no longer surprising to us, and often barely register in western media, but seeing these all-too-familiar events unfold from a child's point of view makes them seem so much more real.
Apart from being a glimpse into his inner life for Emmanuel Jal's fans, this book is for anyone who's ever wondered just how a child can go from living a relatively normal life to fighting in a civil war. This transformation, as it turns out, is as frighteningly quick as it is undramatic, one of the many brutal realities Jal learned to accept in his early years.
While the civil war in which Jal fought has since ended, it has been replaced with another war that still rages in the Sudan. The refugee camps are still packed and many Sudanese are still suffering every day. If nothing else, the book serves as a glimpse into their lives.
Through this book, but also through his music and a documentary feature made about his life, Jal's stated purpose is "to bring peace to Sudan and education to the children of Africa." Jal's first studio album, "Warchild," came out in 2008. The documentary about his life, also called War Child, is currently available on DVD.