"Running For My Life" by Lopez "Lopepe" Lomong

“Running For My Life” is Lopez “Lopepe” Lomong’s inspirational account (with a little help from Mark Tabb) on how a 6 year old boy attending church in Kimotong, a remote South Sudanese village torn by civil war, managed the opportunities it would take to become a professional runner representing America in the Olympic Games and acquiring an American post-secondary school diploma. One unsuspecting day, Lopepe was ripped from his mothers arms along with all other children present at church that day to be forever separated from their families and trained to be rebel soldiers in an existing civil war. Through a series of lucky events, which Lopepe considers “God’s grace”, he escapes the rebels, finds shelter in a refugee camp and discovers himself (by God’s plan) in America with opportunities available to him he never conceived of.

 Lopepe shares a story with his readers that is otherwise very unknown to the Western world in a very inquisitive and charming fashion. He illustrates his bed as a mat on a floor in his one-roomed hut separated by a stove positioned in the middle for heat in Africa and how he had never known anything else and is amazed to find himself expected to use a plush mattress elevated high off the floor by a bed frame. This is one of many examples of Lopepe’s unique crossover from a very drastically impovershed lifestyle to a more pampered and accommodated one. I recommend this book to anyone looking for an inspirational memoir to read (if you are religious, this particular book is even more highly recommended). However, although it is highly inspirational and renews your faith in fate (if not some higher Being), I did not like how much luck/God’s presence was associated with his journey and personally felt his triumphs over certain obstacles would have been greater if he did not attribute them to a plan laid out for him by God but a plan he actively refused to stop pursuing.