The postcolonial landscape of Africa has been marred by civil wars and pervasive unrest, a reality that has been vividly captured by renowned African writers such as Nadine Gordimer, Athol Fugard, Chinua Achebe, and J. M. Coetzee. Adding his voice to this powerful literary tradition, Ishmael Beah highlights a particularly harrowing aspect of these conflicts: the recruitment and exploitation of children as soldiers. His narrative has drawn comparisons to David Eggers’s What Is the What (2006), which tells the story of Sudan's "lost boys," further underscoring the shared themes of displacement and survival amid violence.

While Beah is an African by birth and an American by migration, his memoir, A Long Way Gone, resonates with the journey depicted in African American autobiographies, especially slave narratives. In a harrowing parallel, just as enslaved individuals once traversed the Mason-Dixon Line or the Ohio River in pursuit of liberation in the North, Beah crosses the Atlantic Ocean, seeking refuge from the devastation of his homeland. This journey mirrors the themes found in Richard Wright’s Black Boy, where the protagonist escapes from oppressive environments to discover freedom and a voice in a new world.