Words matter. These are the best Uzodinma Iweala Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Our racial past and future is something that we Americans must address.
Washington, D.C., is not a subtle city. Unlike the capitals of other once-great powers which, many hundreds of years old, present a more seamless meshing of monumental memory and daily life, D.C. is constructed to shout, ‘Here I am! I am powerful!’ to the world.
Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned?
When I speak about ‘we,’ it gets very complex very quickly. Having grown up in the United States, but also being very much a member of Nigerian societies and also different parts of Nigerian societies, I understand that we construct particular ‘we’s.’
Memoir is a difficult literary form to pull off when dealing with discrete and poignant moments in a life, even harder when seeking to narrate over 80 years of existence.
We grew up going to church, and I believe in God. I don’t know that I have the ability to define what or who or how God is. You know, I think that religion kind of messes people up in that regard. That’s just my own personal philosophy.
In my senior year of high school, I read an article in ‘Newsweek’ about child soldiers in Sierra Leone. I felt a sense of shock – this was happening in the region where I’m from, and people don’t know about it. I wanted to understand.
Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.
I suppose I’m pulled towards fiction because I really like the freedom it gives me.
There are books that are made for you to sit and puzzle over and spend time with.
I find the sort of unwitting European American outsider who wants to come to Africa to help is a very problematic construction. It’s problematic because you don’t want to tell people don’t aid, don’t help, when people feel a need to.
There are skills you pick up on in a clinical environment in terms of how to ask questions, what to look for, how to listen that serve one well when trying to write.
I love playing with language and the rhythm of language – for some reason, this seems so much easier for me to do when I get to make things up than when writing nonfiction.
I don’t know if I want to be a writer.
I hear a good song and I start thinking, ‘Oh shoot. You know there’s a story that can be told to this,’ and whatnot.
Reading ‘Search Sweet Country’ is like reading a dream, and indeed, at times, it feels like the magical landscapes of writers like the Nigerian Ben Okri or the Mozambican Mia Couto.
I would say, number one, don’t worry about getting published. Just write. Number two, just write. Three is make sure you read.
I’ve been writing since I was really young.
Everybody has an equal right to be on this earth and to be happy on this earth and to achieve on this earth. That’s kind of the way that I would like to try and go about living.
‘Beasts of No Nation’ began when I read an article about child soldiers in Sierra Leone during my final year of high school.
Many great novels have shown a world torn to shreds by the brutality of war. To do so, their authors ground their texts in the details of destruction and decay.
European authors often write books about the rest of the world that profess a vision of shared humanity but fall far short, casting the other as exotic or dangerous.
We are not living in the same world we were immediately after the Cold War, when there seemed to be a greater belief in the universality of human rights and there was enough prosperity to make us question why we had not committed more resources to upholding the values we claimed to hold most dear.
D.C. is in my blood, my diction, my sensibility and style. I am, though, in love with a city that cannot fully love me back.
My parents have raised me and my three siblings to be aware of the privilege we have been afforded and the responsibility it brings.
I think, all too often, this society has too monolithic a definition of what a black American is.
No one can really relate to somebody who has given up entirely.
‘Talking Peace’ is one of the few books from childhood that I still keep prominently displayed on my bookshelf.
In general, Barack Hussein Obama brings us face to face with the discomfort our society feels with this idea of difference.
In terms of medicine, I’ve generally been pretty interested in public health issues as they relate to sub-Saharan Africa on a broad scale – HIV/AIDS, malaria etc.
The kidnapped person is so tantalizingly close, kept alive by a devastating hope. Kidnapping or hostage-taking is perhaps the most disturbing form of terror because it turns this hope into a liability that can paralyze.
America is decidedly not ‘post-racial.’
As Americans, I think we’re a very entitled bunch.
Sometimes you just wanna go out, see your action movie, be done with it, come home. You know, and, like, you see ‘The Matrix’ or whatever, you see whatever film it is, and you’re like, ‘Oh cool,’ whatever.
People just think Africa is this one thing. So if you’re from Nigeria, then you’re the same as somebody from Kenya; not realizing that within Nigeria, right, we have 250 different ethnic groups, right? Two hundred and fifty different languages.