In 2015, as a graduate student studying sociology at the University of Colorado, author James Garofalo traveled to Africa to conduct an independent research study on the child soldiers of Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army. What started out as an engaging graduate thesis quickly shifted into an unruly quest for self-discovery as his personal identity grew further & further from the life he left back in America. Blurring the lines between pleasure & performance, conformity & chaos, James' appetite for new and at times, dangerous experiences, began to outweigh his dwindling ambition for any sense of studious achievement.
Upon his return, expecting academic recognition for his work, James was greeted with anything but praise. Instead, he was bullied, threatened, and ultimately ostracized from his academic peers & professors who demanded the contents of this book be handed over & promptly destroyed.
Burning Bridges, which features direct quotes from former child soldiers, along with much of the content James was forbidden to share, paints a transparent picture of the sheer perversion that exists within the walls of bureaucracy. It exploits the tragic outcomes that are too often associated with the pretentious landscape of mankind's institutional existence. This story tells a true tale of a young man's undivided love for a group of people who endured a merciless genocide but is told through the unforgiving & rebellious lens of a misunderstood 27-year-old.
