Customer Reviews

God Grew Tired Of Us: A Memoir

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wow! I can't believe there isn't more buzz and more sales of this book considering what a powerful life-changing tale John Bul Dau has to tell. As far as a window to what a human soul can endure and a confirmation of faith in the unflappable power of the human spirit to overcome horrid adversity just to survive, Bul Dau's "God Grew Tired of Us: A Memoir," has to rank right up there with "Left to Tell," by Immaculee Ilibagiza and Anne Frank's Hiding Place Diary.

After reading this book, you can even rush out to the theater and catch the Oscar deserving "God Grew Tired Of Us," documentary about John, Panther, and Daniel plight of coming to America. The movie and the book are ultimately tales of redemption and hope and how new beginnings in new countries can be a life catalyst. But be warned, the book is not for the faint of heart and placid of wills. It will gently urge you to do something, anything to turn the tide in the Darfur region of Sudan, where genocide on a massive scale has been perpetrated by the current government while the international community largely looks on unaffected and unacting.

John's voice though doesn't reach to such global assumptions and is never preachy. It is a simple tale of tragedy on a holocaust-like scale every bit as terrible as Rwanda's civil war. John escapes to Kukuma refugee camp and eventually finds his way with two of his best friends and fellow "lost boys," to a New York Syracuse apartment and the difficult process of transitioning to a new life and new culture begins.

Ultimately John fights to hold on to his Dinka culture and I dare you to fight to keep a dry eye when John discovers not only is his mother still alive in Sudan (whom he was separated from at age 13) but reunites with her in a New York airport with dramatic tears and full-on celebration of joy. It is a defining moment that captures in a simple sentence the power of families and the power of the human spirit to survive.

There are so many moments of clarity in John's text. He eventually comes to ask the question, "Why did the United States choose to intervene in Kosovo and not in Sudan or Rwanda?" Though this may sound like a bleak tale it is not. John's writing is actually quite laugh out loud humorous as he explains how Panther, Daniel, and John learn how to live in America. Navigating through things we take for granted like how to turn on and off a lightswitch, what the garbage can is for, and how bills build up the more money you make. John eventually sees a way to turn his plight into a national call to action by starting up a "Lost Boys," non-profit movement and finding a way to keep his culture alive, his family alive, while being influenced by the unavoidable Americanization that occurred.

I really can't give a strong enough recommendation for John Bul Dau's "God Grew Tired of Us." It is one of the 5 most powerful books (and films too) that I have experienced in my life of 38 short years. I had the privilege to work with Sudanese refugee families in Head Start and know the horror and terror of their tales and what they will be pushed to do to find a better life for their children. Ultimately, John Bul Dau finds himself making the same choices in this finely written book. It reminded me very strongly of the Jewish Holocaust remembrance movement's slogan, "Lest we not forget." Have we forgotten already about the tragedies Bul Dau and millions others are experiencing in Sudan? I think not. I think there is still time to act and Bul Dau's book will leave you inspired. It's a must read. --MMW

God Grew Tired of Us is one of the most powerful books I've read. It had my attention from the first page and I didn't want to put it down. John Bul Dau is such an incredible inspiration... you can't read this book and not be profoundly affected by his astonishing determination, leadership and desire to never give up. His description of his experience coming to the U.S. really makes me appreciate what we have. We so often forget how lucky we are and how it's so silly to get upset at the little things in life that are minor inconveniences to us. Hopefully this book will open your mind and your heart. I strongly encourage you to read it and pass it on.

This book makes the struggles in my life seem so minute. The torturous childhood this man had would make any normal person die simply to end the pain of everyday life. And yet he has found his way to a better place. As a longtime member of Law Enforcement as well as current Military, I have seen my fair share of misery and poverty. The struggles in our country as bad as they can get and I have seen, do not even compare to what this man and his fellow brothers endured for years. As I read this book I asked myself to take a long look at my life and see how I can do better or more to help others. I did not want to, but his life makes you see that nothing is so bad being a teenager walking naked in the middle of Africa for hundreds of miles on a journey taking months, only to find his life in even more danger and having to leave again.

Lots of people look up to the rich and famous, rock stars, models, actors or even the President as people they would like to meet. John Dau is at the top of my list of whom I would like to meet. Simply for me to tell him that I am sorry. Sorry that while I was a teenager hanging out at the mall eating when and what I wanted with no worries other than my bicycle might be stolen; he was starving, thirsty, dirty, naked, no shoes, no soap. no toothbrush... No family, no knowledge of if his family was even alive. He had NOTHING! While I was relatively safe begging my parents to buy me more of this and more of that all of which was so important to me to have then. Now I would have given up everything to John had I known of the situation.

Now I know, and feel ashamed. Thank you John for telling us your story and getting the information out to the world. I will find a way that my help is needed and contribute to help ensure others do not have to go through what you did.

John, I am so glad that you did not grow tired of God.

I enjoyed this book. It was a quick read and really makes you question your own attitude in life. I chose it for a bookclub and everyone said they would not have picked it up and read it on their own and were really glad they did. Can't wait to see the documentary! I think everyone should read this book.

When you consider that John Bul Dau started the first grade when he was eighteen, scratching his first A-B-C's in the dusty ground of a refugee camp, his memoir is inspiring by any measure. It's hard to imagine anyone surviving what Dau describes, much less flourishing once he had the opportunity. By the time he started copying books from the refugee camp library, learned English and Swahili in order to understand the instruction, passed the Kenyan high school exam, then made it to Syracuse, New York, he had wandered upwards of a thousand miles over fourteen years from his bucolic village in southern Sudan.

Sudan is not only the largest country in Africa, and one of the most complex (572 tribes that speak 114 languages), it's also one of the most war-torn. The Darfur genocide in western Sudan rightly grabs our attention, but for twenty-five years civil war raged in the southern part of the country. The "white" Arab and Muslim government in Khartoum has tried to impose strict Islam as the state religion for the entire country, but the black and Christian south rebelled. In 2005 a Comprehensive Peace Agreement was reached.

When the Khartoum government bombed Dau's village of Duk Payuel in 1987, he fled with thousands of other displaced Sudanese. He was thirteen years old. Rape, disease, pillage, daily burials, wild animals, famine (they sometimes ate mud and drank urine), government troops, and hostile tribes did not prevent Dau and some 265,000 Sudanese from reaching refugee camps in Ethiopia to the east. Most of them were young boys and a few men, as women and girls could hardly survive, and so they became known as the "Lost Boys of Sudan." When Ethiopian troops started slaughtering them, the refugees trekked 500 miles south to safety in Kenya. By then Dau was eighteen. Nine years later he was one of only 3,600 Sudanese refugees in Kenya who were resettled in the United States.

Dau is the first to thank the many people who helped him in America, but it bears saying that by his account he was totally self-sufficient about six months after he arrived. He finished community college, entered Syracuse University, met and married a Sudanese woman from his Dinka tribe, started several foundations to help Sudan, sent most of his hourly wages back home, and was featured in the award-winning documentary film God Grew Tired of Us; The Story of the Lost Boys of Sudan (Sundance Grand Jury and Audience awards in 2006). It's only fitting that Dau's improbable story ends with reconnecting with his mother, father, and siblings. "God," he writes, "had not forgotten me after all."

This is one of about six excellent books that are in print that tells the story of the Lost Boys of Sudan. As the Chairman of the Lost Boys Rebuilding Southern Sudan, I have worked with and had the opportunity to hear the stories of many of these facinating young men. "God Grew Tired Of Us" is a story of just one of the 4,000 plus Lost Boys that now live in the United States. Once you have met one of these young men, your life will be changed, and you will fall in love with them. After what they have been through to see their faith in God and their love for mankind it makes one feel guilty of what we have been doing with our lives. Get this book, read it, and pass it on. If this book touches your life, like it has most people that have read it, you will also want to read: They Poured Fire On Us From the Sky; What Is The What; They Journey Of The Lost Boys; Lost Boys No More; and The Lost Boys of Sudan - An American Story of the Refugee Experience.
These young men feel that "Education Is Their Father and Mother" and no one can take that away from them. As they work two jobs to cover their expenses, they still find time to get an education. Even with all the struggles that they have here in the United States they have formed the Lost Boys Rebuilding Southern Sudan Foundation, which is rising funds to build schools back in Southern Sudan. Their website is: [...]

I know that you will find this book an inspiration and the other books that I have listed too.

The subtitle of this excellent book ,i.e."the heartbreaking and inspiring journey of a lost boy of Sudan" is such that nothing could be more appropriate. And so does the illustration in the book's jacket design(credits to Newmarker films and Melissa Farris).

After the heart-wrenching feeling of losing their families, the incredible journey of John and the tens of thousands of lost Sudanese boys through a thousand or so miles of unknown and ferocious landscape is beyond human understanding! Yet, it was accomplished, with all those miserable conditions they carried, when they reached Ethiopia. From that land, they were again cruelly driven to the same misery until they reached the Kakuma Refugee Center in Kenya.

Perhaps in order to truly comprehend the essence of what the book narrates, the reader should imagine him/her self to be with the lost kids in their terrifying exodus. That these are YOUNG CHILDREN some as young as 8yrs and 6yrs!That they are NOT adults,like the MOSTLY ADULT refugees we hear about or the ADULT prisoners of war on their death march for a hundred miles more or less. Can anyone truly see a THOUSAND OR SO MILES of terrain associated with desolation,nakedness,terror,hunger,thirst,fear
disease,sorrow,despair and death by wild animals or hostile human beings?Immersed in this predicament,you LISTEN TO and HEAR their sobs,cravings for missing or dead parents,lament for dead or dying companions,cries from their wounds and broken bodies,slow death by starvation and the more
horrible sensation of dying of thirst leading to drinking their own or their friends'urine for survival,their fear of the night and the searing daytime. Then suddenly,gunshots,machine guns,mortars aimed at them!They panic and scatter in different directions to hide.
The aftermath of all these sufferings?-->dead bodies to bury.CHILDREN BURYING CHILDREN with sharp sticks from the bush and their bare hands for lack of axes or shovels. Can anyone comment if there is such a scenario elsewhere in the world,
past or present? Children burying children in a MASSIVE scale.

John's faith in God and himself made it possible to attain his goal from rural Africa to an American university.The adjustments and adaptations to an ultramodern world from a "stone age" type of existence by John and his Sudanese companions in America is fascinatingly told in the book.From there,he is resolved to accept the challenge to go FURTHER to help himself,his family and his people back in Sudan. He has also given us a gift which serves as an example that in the face of unbearable adversity, hope and success are still attainable with a strong faith and will. I'm sure that John Bul Dau has also spiritually added to the title of his book"God Grew Tired of Us" ...the words "But He Did Not Really Abandon Us."

This is a highly recommended reading for everone but perhaps particularly to our youth.

The author's experience in childhood rates among the all-time records of extremes of human suffering. The story is, however, much more than a record of suffering. It is a story of triumph and faith in the goodness of God without being trite or over-simplifying very complex paradoxes and inconsistancies in life. John Bul Dau is a living demonstration of the superiorty of faith, optimism, and determination over despair.

This book showed the human side of this tragic war in this country and how they survive. This made you aware of others and their struggles during the war in Africa. A must read on your list.

A daunting story of survival. Somehow the author though obviously scarred by the experience still finds humor, compassion and optimism with life. If you liked "Kite Runner" then give this one a try.