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War Brothers

the Graphic Novel
Jan 16, 2014JCLChrisK rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This is a barely fictionalized account of one boy's experience being "recruited" into Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda in the early 2000s. "Recruited," in this case, means kidnapped, starved, beaten, and broken, then taught to hate oneself as an irredeemable monster by being forced to kill innocent people to survive--when, for example, after first being taken and forced to march for days with no food, one of the boys is too weak to continue, three of his friends are told to beat him to death with logs or have their arms chopped off with machetes. It's a gruesome tale made all the more horrific by its truth. Powerful images relate the awful string of events. It's a quick read, but a dense and important one considering this is not a lesson from history, but an ongoing occurrence in our real world.