Marc Sommers. We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2023. 488 pp. $34.95. Paper. ISBN: 9780820364742.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: The peacebuilding nongovernmental organization, Conciliation Resources, publishes an excellent series, named Accord.Each issue dissects an armed conflict.Paying the Price-the title of the 2000 issue focusing on Sierra Leone-provides a chronology of the war and presents verbatim (the multiple) peace agreements.It also includes a section with profiles of the key players in the conflict: politicians, warlords, and other protagonists.In We the Young Fighters, Marc Sommers makes a strong case for Bob Marley, John Rambo, and Tupac Shakur to be listed among the conflict's key players.Based on extensive interview material with ex-combatants and civilians in Sierra Leone and among Sierra Leonean refugee populations in neighboring countries and across well over a decade, Sommers unpacks the significant impact these three popular culture figures had on the 1991-2002 war in Sierra Leone and its often young and under-age fighters: Marley inspiring marginalized groups to "stand up for your right" from the 1970s and 80s onwards when Sierra Leone became an increasingly authoritarian state under the leadership of Siaka Stevens and into the decade of civil war; Tupac-arriving on the scene just after the start of the war-introducing his self-proclaimed "thug life" as a life style not to be ashamed of, arguing in his rap lyrics how the system was rigged against him, but never giving up his agency; and Rambo, the fictional Vietnam War veteran, waging a one-man war against hostile domestic state authorities, using nothing more than bush craft and his wits-all three act as a fascinating lens to understand the often puzzling conflict and extreme violence committed against innocent men, women, and children during the war in Sierra Leone.The conflict in Sierra Leone has been the focus of numerous journal articles and monographs, with diverse understandings and interpretations, ranging from "greed" (read blood diamonds) to "grievances," and from "neo-patrimonialism" to "neo-Malthusianism."A key contribution of Sommers's book is in showing how this conflict, like many other post-cold war new wars, is much more embedded in modern and globalized conceptual frameworks than some commentators would argue.Further contributions are in not just focusing on the various armed protagonists but also giving voice to their victims and reminding us about the horrendous atrocities that took place, and in understanding "youth" as young men as well as young women.However, does it really need 400 pages to do this?At times it felt somewhat repetitive, and I could not fail to notice that I got a little bit tired about reading
Source: African Studies Review
Author: Krijn Peters
Institution: Swansea University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4416231045
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