Uzodinma Iweala Quotes

Uzodinma Iweala

Profession : Author

Birth : November 5, 1982

Right after undergrad, I started doing low-level work on health issues in sub-Saharan Africa, and what struck me was the disconnect between how people in New York would speak about some of the issues people were facing. At the time, 2006-ish, there were a number of big media campaigns to raise awareness about HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

Uzodinma Iweala

Sensationalism only works for so long. Think of something like the Kony 2012 campaign. Its sensationalized, viral language got people all hot and bothered, but at the end of the day, there was so much it got wrong about the situation, and that did more damage to their cause than what they got right.

Uzodinma Iweala

Anybody who tells you they're not scared when starting a new book project is a very good liar.

Uzodinma Iweala

When somebody says that six million people died in the Holocaust, there is nobody in the world who can understand that. It's only through story, reading books by Elie Wiesel or Primo Levi, that you really begin to understand the trauma and how horrible it actually was.

Uzodinma Iweala

I'm a black man in the United States, and there's no two ways about that. I have a shared common experience with other black men, and through that, there's an automatic understanding.

Uzodinma Iweala

I'm not a propaganda machine. I tell things how I see them. When I say, for example, that corruption is not the only thing the West should think about when they think about Nigeria, I'm not saying it doesn't exist but that people have the complete wrong focus. There's music, there's art, there's culture.

Uzodinma Iweala

I think 'Beasts of No Nation' is a novel that hopefully will affect each person who reads it in a different way.

Uzodinma Iweala

My parents have raised me and my three siblings to be aware of the privilege we have been afforded and the responsibility it brings.

Uzodinma Iweala

It's true that people will take advantage of you in Nigeria, but this happens everywhere in the world.

Uzodinma Iweala

America is decidedly not 'post-racial.'

Uzodinma Iweala

In general, Barack Hussein Obama brings us face to face with the discomfort our society feels with this idea of difference.

Uzodinma Iweala

Our racial past and future is something that we Americans must address.

Uzodinma Iweala

I've been writing since I was really young.

Uzodinma Iweala

I suppose I'm pulled towards fiction because I really like the freedom it gives me.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.

Uzodinma Iweala

As Americans, I think we're a very entitled bunch.

Uzodinma Iweala

I think, all too often, this society has too monolithic a definition of what a black American is.

Uzodinma Iweala

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.'

Uzodinma Iweala

I think the more complex your idea of who someone is or who a particular group is, the less able you are to separate 'we' and 'outside' or 'us and them.' I think that that's something that we really, really need to pay attention to.

Uzodinma Iweala