The Lost Boys of Sudan

The Lost Boys of Sudan
Author: Mark Bixler
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0820328839

In 2000 the United States began accepting 3,800 refugees from one of Africa's longest civil wars. They were just some of the thousands of young men, known as "Lost Boys," who had been orphaned or otherwise separated from their families in the chaos of a brutal conflict that has ravaged their home country of Sudan since 1983. [This book] focuses on four of these refugees. Theirs, however, is a typical story, one that repeated itself wherever the Lost Boys were found across America. It is a story of the countless challenges of "making it" in a strange new place after years on the run in Sudan or in refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia.... As we immerse ourselves in the Lost Boys' daily lives, we also get to know the social services professionals and volunteers, celebrities, community leaders, and others who guided them - with occasional detours - toward self-sufficiency. Along the way, [the author] looks closely at the ins and outs of U.S. refugee policy, the politics of international aid, the history of Sudan, and the radical Islamist underpinnings of its government. -Dust jacket.

King Deng, the Original Lost Boy of Sudan

King Deng, the Original Lost Boy of Sudan
Author: Makur Abiar
Publisher:
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780984172962

Since the mid-1980s, Sudan has been involved in civil war fueled by religious, ethnic, and regional strife. Thousands of children have experienced horrors and intense hardships beyond the scale of human understanding. They have been dubbed the Lost Boys of Sudan. Many, orphaned by the war, have arrived at Kakuma, a refugee camp in Kenya. The label of the Lost Boys was borrowed from the children's story Peter Pan. The Lost Boys of Sudan describe a generation of Sudanese boys driven from their tribal lands by the devastation of the civil war between the North and the South. The Original Lost Boy of Sudan told by King Deng Akon, details the truth regarding the war in southern Sudan, the scorching desert, heat, and the historical events that led to the bloodshed. The true experiences of "the Lost Boys of Sudan" has been overlooked or simply mentioned by the media. However, King Deng Akon provides an opportunity to witness a perilous quest for freedom from a first-person perspective. King Deng is the emblem of peace and The Original Lost Boy of Sudan is the insignia of struggle out of Africa to America.

What Is the What

What Is the What
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 563
Release: 2009-02-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307371379

What Is the What is the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a refugee in war-ravaged southern Sudan who flees from his village in the mid-1980s and becomes one of the so-called Lost Boys. Valentino’s travels bring him in contact with enemy soldiers, with liberation rebels, with hyenas and lions, with disease and starvation, and with deadly murahaleen (militias on horseback)–the same sort who currently terrorize Darfur. Eventually Deng is resettled in the United States with almost 4000 other young Sudanese men, and a very different struggle begins. Based closely on true experiences, What Is the What is heartbreaking and arresting, filled with adventure, suspense, tragedy, and, finally, triumph.

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky

They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky
Author: Benjamin Ajak
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2015-08-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610395999

The inspiring story of three young Sudanese boys who were driven from their homes by civil war and began an epic odyssey of survival, facing life-threatening perils, ultimately finding their way to a new life in America. Between 1987 and 1989, Alepho, Benjamin, and Benson, like tens of thousands of young boys, took flight from the massacres of Sudan's civil war. They became known as the Lost Boys. With little more than the clothes on their backs, sometimes not even that, they streamed out over Sudan in search of refuge. Their journey led them first to Ethiopia and then, driven back into Sudan, toward Kenya. They walked nearly one thousand miles, sustained only by the sheer will to live. They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky is the three boys' account of that unimaginable journey. With the candor and the purity of their child's-eye-vision, Alephonsian, Benjamin, and Benson recall by turns: how they endured the hunger and strength-sapping illnesses-dysentery, malaria, and yellow fever; how they dodged the life-threatening predators-lions, snakes, crocodiles and soldiers alike-that dogged their footsteps; and how they grappled with a war that threatened continually to overwhelm them. Their story is a lyrical, captivating, timeless portrait of a childhood hurled into wartime and how they had the good fortune and belief in themselves to survive.

Seed of South Sudan

Seed of South Sudan
Author: Majok Marier
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2014-05-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1476614970

One of the most detailed books on the Lost Boys of Sudan since South Sudan became the world's newest nation in 2011, this is a memoir of Majok Marier, an Agar Dinka who was 7 when war came to his village in southern Sudan. During a 21-year civil war, 2 million lives were lost and 80 percent of the South Sudanese people were displaced. Tens of thousands of boys like Majok fled from the Sudanese Army that wanted to kill them. Surviving on grasses, grains, and help from villagers along the way, Majok walked nearly a thousand miles to a refugee camp in Ethiopia. Majok and 3,800 like him emigrated to the United States in 2001 while the civil war still raged. His story is joined to others' in this book.

Brothers in Hope

Brothers in Hope
Author: Mary Williams
Publisher:
Total Pages: 41
Release: 2005
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781584302322

Sudanese Garang is eight when he returns to his village and finds that everything has been destroyed. Soon, Garang meets other boys whose villages have been attacked and they unite, walking hundreds of miles to safety - first in Ethiopia then in Kenya. The boys face numerous hardships along the way, but their faith and mutual support help keep the hope of finding a new home alive in their hearts. Based on heartbreaking yet inspirational true events, this is a story of remarkable and enduring courage, and an amazing testament to the unyielding power of the spirit.

What They Meant for Evil

What They Meant for Evil
Author: Rebecca Deng
Publisher: FaithWords
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2019-09-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1546013210

Many stories have been told about the famous Lost Boys but now, for the first time, a Lost Girl shares her hauntingly beautiful and inspiring story. One of the first unaccompanied refugee children to enter the United States in 2000, after South Sudan's second civil war took the lives of most of her family, Rebecca's story begins in the late 1980s when, at the age of four, her village was attacked and she had to escape. What They Meant for Evil is the account of that unimaginable journey. With the candor and purity of a child, Rebecca recalls how she endured fleeing from gunfire, suffering through hunger and strength-sapping illnesses, dodging life-threatening predators-lions, snakes, crocodiles, and soldiers alike-that dogged her footsteps, and grappling with a war that stole her childhood. Her story is a lyrical, captivating portrait of a child hurled into wartime, and how through divine intervention, she came to America and found a new life full of joy, hope, and redemption.

A Hologram for the King

A Hologram for the King
Author: Dave Eggers
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013-06-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 034580760X

A National Book Award Finalist, a New York Times bestseller and one of the most highly-acclaimed books of the year, A Hologram for the King is a sprawling novel about the decline of American industry from one of the most important, socially-aware novelists of our time. In a rising Saudi Arabian city, far from weary, recession-scarred America, a struggling businessman named Alan Clay pursues a last-ditch attempt to stave off foreclosure, pay his daughter's college tuition, and finally do something great. In A Hologram for the King, Dave Eggers takes us around the world to show how one man fights to hold himself and his splintering family together in the face of the global economy's gale-force winds. This taut, richly layered, and elegiac novel is a powerful evocation of our contemporary moment--and a moving story of how we got here.

A Hare in the Elephant's Trunk

A Hare in the Elephant's Trunk
Author: Jan L. Coates
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2010
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9780889954519

Inspired by the real life experiences of a Sudanese boy, follows Jacob Akech Deng's journey as he flees his home under the threat of war, and, guided by the memory of his mother, tries to survive in a refugee camp.

The Lost Boy

The Lost Boy
Author: Ayik Chut Deng
Publisher: Random House Australia
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0143796305

As a boy living in the Dinka tribe in what is now South Sudan, the youngest country in the world, Ayik Chut Deng was a member of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). During his time as a child soldier, he witnessed unspeakable violence and was regularly tortured by older boys. At age nineteen, he and his family escaped the conflict in Sudan and resettled in Toowoomba, Australia. But adjusting to his new life in small-town Queensland was more difficult than he anticipated. He was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that was misdiagnosed as schizophrenia, leading to years of erratic behaviour on the wrong medication. He struggled with drugs and alcohol, fought with his family and found himself in trouble with the law before he came to the painful realisation that his behaviour was putting his life, as well as the lives of his loved ones, at risk. As an adult now living in Brisbane, Ayik is a father, working as an actor and volunteering at his local youth centre. Overcoming a childhood filled with torture and war was a process of lifelong learning, choices and challenges that included a remarkable chance encounter with a figure from his past, and an appearance on national television. The Lost Boy is an honest and revealing account of the complexities of trauma, and one man’s story of how he got to where he is today.