Uzodinma Iweala Quotes

Uzodinma Iweala

Profession : Author

Birth : November 5, 1982

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

Around the world, our cities are not the idealised open, accessible, and cosmopolitan spaces of our dreams. More often than not, they are sectioned and controlled purviews of the radically wealthy, surrounded by clusters of have-nots.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

There are books that are made for you to sit and puzzle over and spend time with.

Uzodinma Iweala

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?

Uzodinma Iweala

Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

'Beasts of No Nation' began when I read an article about child soldiers in Sierra Leone during my final year of high school.

Uzodinma Iweala

The denial with which many African leaders and communities greeted the appearance of HIV and AIDS across the continent in the 1990s is now considered a tragic mistake rather than a purposeful pushback against lingering colonial prejudice.

Uzodinma Iweala

When the HIV/AIDS epidemic first appeared, a lot of the reaction was that it's not happening here. It doesn't exist. It's not on the continent of Africa. Then we moved into this other phase, in which it was kind of like, it's everywhere.

Uzodinma Iweala

When you relate to a disease, you're afraid. When you relate to a person, there is compassion. You see someone that is like you, that could be like you. You can see yourself in that same situation.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

Medicine has an immediate impact, the ability to do good. Writing is such a solitary activity.

Uzodinma Iweala

War in Africa is hardly a new phenomenon, nor are voices telling its stories of terror and triumph. Yet some of the continent's most devastating conflicts - and the literature born from the experiences of their survivors - have often gone unnoticed in the West.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

Whether as living humans or as mythological figures, ancestors have always played an important role in the African popular and literary imagination. Sometimes, as in Amos Tutuola's famous short novels, they directly influence events. More often, as in the works of Chinua Achebe, both living and dead ancestors are sages offering valuable advice.

Uzodinma Iweala

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority.

Uzodinma Iweala