Uzodinma Iweala, author of a highly acclaimed first novel, Beasts of No Nation, a first-person account of the life of a child soldier in Sierra Leone, read from his novel and discussed its purpose and meaning at a CGD event last week. The audience also watched an excerpt from War Dance, a forthcoming film about former child soldiers in Uganda by filmmaker Sean Fine. (Video of Iweala's reading and a transcript of the discussion with Iweala and Fine are now online.) Afterwards, Iweala answered questions about the book:
Q: Why did you write Beasts of No Nation?
A: The idea came during my senior year of high school. I flipped open a Newsweek magazine and there was an article about a child soldier in Sierra Leone. I really didn’t know much about what was happening in Sierra Leone or Liberia or some of the other places where child soldiers were being used. I found the idea that a kid that much younger than I was at the time had to fight, wasn’t assured of even whether he would sleep and wake up the next morning so very troubling. I was ignorant and I felt like I wanted and needed to know more about the political and humanitarian issues. Most importantly for me, I wanted to take the issue away from the more intellectual discussions and focus on the emotional component of the story. I didn’t actually write the novel until after meeting a former child soldier. It was the emotions stirred up by face-to-face interaction with a survivor of this terrible phenomenon that got me ready and able to write.
Q: When you spoke at the CGD event, several people asked you what could be done to address the problems that give rise to child soldiers. You were reluctant to offer prescriptions. Why?
A: There are two reasons. First, I don’t know if I’m qualified. I’m not a policy person (not yet at least) and I don’t have a background in conflict studies or child psychology, so I don’t want to speak outside of my realm of expertise.
Second, I think that the book is part of the solution -- raising awareness. I believe that art and literature appeals to a different side of the human intelligence -- the emotional intelligence. I think this very powerful and often underappreciated by action-oriented people. Sometimes one needs to slow down and understand an issue emotionally before prescribing a solution. That is what Beasts of No Nation was for me, and that’s what I hope it will be for those who read it – one part of the solution. I had to slow down emotionally to really try and grasp what it meant to be in the situation of a child soldier before I could say I know now how to respond. I want to be able to help others to do the same.
Q: You also watched the excerpt from Sean Fine’s forthcoming film, War Dance, about efforts to rehabilitate and reintegrate child soldiers in Uganda. How do the differences between documentary film and narrative fiction shape the ways in which you and Sean address this difficult topic?
A: Fiction allows one to take liberties, leaps of imagination that help to tell the story. In fiction – for me at least – the story is king and the writer’s obligation is to tell the most emotionally affecting story. If it’s fantasy – fine. If it’s historical fiction – fine. If the story holds together and is effective in bringing the reader to a new emotional and intellectual plain, then the writer has done his job. In my mind the documentary film maker is more constrained by the facts of a given situation. If someone is making a documentary about an event in Rwanda – you can’t set it in Russia even if that would make the story that much more emotionally effective. I don’t know if that makes the documentary film more honest than fiction (this is all in the way that one lays out the facts), but it does give it more of an immediate connection to reality.
Q: You are from Nigeria but grew up in Washington DC. How did you imagine your way into the mind and heart of a child forced to kill?
A: I did my research. I talked to people. I read lots and lots on everything from child psychology to interviews with former child soldiers. And then I sat with that knowledge that I had gathered and just tried to absorb it all. There had to be a period when all I did was to sit and try to absorb. Then I wrote, rewrote and rewrote again until that boy came to life within the context of the story.
Q: Hearing you read from Beasts of No Nation was chilling, and reading it is emotionally quite challenging. Was it emotionally difficult for you to write?
A: Beasts of No Nation was an incredibly hard book to write. There is nothing more troubling, other than being a victim or an unwilling perpetrator of violence, than spending every waking moment for a year with stories and images of violent actions. I have to say that I was relieved when I finished writing the book.