I write to live just like Okocha plays football for relief
By James Eze (jameseze1@yahoo.com)
Sunday, October 23, 2005

•Uzo Photo: Sun News Publishing

Literari Index

In his white T-shirt and dark blue jeans trousers with a black knapsack strapped to his back, gangly Uzodinma Iweala looks like a hitchhiking teenager out for a picnic.

This is understandable though. At 22, Uzo has just managed to sneak past his teens. But that is as far as his looks can carry you.

Truth is, on that supple, slender neck of his sits a head that is more fitting for a 50-year old man. Just the other day at the Nu Metro Media Shop on Victoria Island, Lagos, he had held a select audience spellbound with a smooth delivery from his wave making debut novel ominously titled – Beasts of No Nation.

He had imposed his influence on the entire proceeding leaving no one in doubt that the show was his and compelling his powerful mother to acknowledge this fact in a terse remark. "I was going to keep quiet because it’s not my occasion", Dr. Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala, the honourable minister of finance had observed before a brief remark at the event.

Well, this morning, you sitting directly opposite Uzo in this snacks bar in the bowls of this magnificent Silverbird Galleria in Victoria Island Lagos and you are tempted to tell this story in "experimental English" because Uzo wrote his mind-bending book in ‘experimental English’. And "it is starting like this’ – Uzo is looking at me through his plain oval eyeglasses and spotting a small beard and a pencil line moustache. He’s looking so boyish I am tempted to doubt he is the same person who had left so profound an impression on his audience a couple of days ago at the official presentation of his book it made his powerful mother grin proudly.

"I did English in the university as my major", he is telling you and fixing a powerful gaze upon you like he wants to bore tiny holes through you. "And it was just write, write as much as I could. Most of my stories deal with a combination of Nigerian and American experiences. You can be in a place, you understand what’s happening but at the same time, you feel like you are not necessarily, completely of that place. Sometimes, when I am here, my cousins tease me that I am not really a Nigerian because I was raised in the US. And when I am in the states, I am not necessarily a real American because the home I grew up in is not an American household. My family is very connected to Nigeria but the things I write in my works mainly have to do with this cross culture, you know, this duality of experience", he seems to be concluding.

Well, you see, Uzo Iweala is as remarkable as the stories he tells - a citizen of two countries and a product of two cultures. Yet he is not, technically speaking, either of the two. In Nigeria, his fast-paced American accent gives him away as a product of another culture. In America, Uzo is an American in the streets but a Nigerian at home where his identity-conscious parents make all the rules and constantly remind the kids who they are. But this has all worked out in his favour.

It has sharpened his consciousness and tuned up his sensibilities as a writer. It has inevitably lent a hand to the peculiarity of the stories Uzo brews and he brewed quite a number back at the all-powerful Harvard University where he graduated magna cum laude but wrote a summa cum laude thesis. It was also at the core of the writing prizes he won in the university including the Eager Prize, Horman Prize, Le Baron Prize, Briggs Prize and of course the Hoopes Prize, warded to the outstanding undergraduate thesis which turned out to be his attention-wrenching Beasts of No Nation. So, in the end there’s a silver layer beneath every niggling ‘duality of experience’ but only if you look hard enough. Remember, Helen Oyeyemi, the teenage author of The Icarus Girl hit fame and fortune, just taping into this experience in far away London.

His powerful eyes are returning to you and he is stretching out his long, almost spindly hands on the gleaming red, circular table. The bar has only two customers – the two of you. The waiters had cast furtive glances at you when you joined him at the table. Perhaps it’s too early for customers to start streaming in. "The Genesis of the idea came a while ago when I was much, much younger back in high school", he is saying in that heavily accented American idiom of his that justifies his cousins’ jokes about his being more American. "I read an article about a 10-year child soldier in the Newsweek magazine. I wrote a short story about it and left it for a while and came back to it after speaking with a former child soldier, China Keitetsi from Uganda. From there, the idea to write this particular novel started taking shape. I did also talk to a lot of relatives about their experiences during the Biafran War just so I can get a better idea. Did I know it was going to be published? No", he is saying about his critically acclaimed Beast of No Nation, which tells a gripping tale about the universal nightmare of child soldiering in a voice that is as remarkable as the author himself.

Actually, several things stand this debut offering out. Apart from its déjà vu inducing title, which he says is a homage to the late Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, the author’s successful with experimental language is almost seminal. His choice of child soldiering, a large universal theme for his creative engagement and a remarkable foresight in deploying a carton-like voice in the narrative approach to considerable success have all excited critics to no end.

The effect of all these has been astounding rave reviews in some of Britain’s most critical Press with words like "visceral", "shocking", "apocalyptic", "poetic", "brutal", "unsparing" and "unflinching" hurled at his narrative technique and promising craftsmanship. But it’s all so simple, or so it seems. Beast of No Nation is a story of Agu, a 9-year old boy in an unnamed West African country who was sucked into a horrendous war when soldiers pillaged his serene village and stripped him of all innocence and hope. Iweala made Agu tell his experiences unrestrained, from bristling savagery and rape to moments when he concludes in a rare stroke of insight that God, if he existed may have forgotten Africa. "I am in a room, I am looking up and seeing – sky. There is nothing to be keeping out the rain or God from watching what it is we are doing… I am laughing laughing because God is forgetting everybody in this country", Agu observed.

The whole world may be surprised at the promise of Uzo Iweala’s literary gift but certainly not his parents who are themselves accomplished professionals. Uzo’s father is a highly respected Washington DC based neurosurgeon and his mother is firmly on the driver’s seat of sweeping reforms in newly democratizing Nigeria as minister of finance. Uzo was only about 20 when he started work on Beasts of No Nation. "I am from a strong family environment. My parents have always said ‘make sure you do what you can to have your own place in this world’. I think that has been very much a part of me. If you want to do something, you can’t do it half-heartedly.

To be honest with you, I write sometimes because I must write to live. I write because writing gives me relief. You know, just like a great footballer like Okocha would tell you that football is a relief to him as well as a profession. Our parents insist that you put your whole mind on whatever you are doing and finish it.

That has contributed to the way that we all behave. There are four of us – three boys and a girl. My parents are the best examples to me", he is saying, half-raising his bushy brows in reaction to your curiosity regarding how he managed to keep his head up in the face of drugs and violence-riddled American pop culture. "I have never been interested in any of those things", he is telling you. "I have uncles and aunties and my grandparents as well. If you have these people behind you, you are not going to waste your time doing that sort of thing. My grand parents have always told us not to let anybody control us. So, I don’t see why anyone should need a gun for instance but different people have different ways of living. Some people think that guns are necessary", says the young author who thinks the world of famous novelist Jamaica Kincaid whom he credits for much of his artistic growth. Kincaid is his project adviser at Harvard. "She is almost like another mother to me", he is saying.

‘I na asukwa Igbo’ (do you speak Igbo), you ask, engaging his gaze and daring him to own up to his inadequacy in the language of his roots. You soon realize how right you are. "No. Unfortunately I don’t. I understand but can’t speak. That’s my regret", he is answering you, sounding so unsure of himself for the first time. Not that it is ‘mattering’, you quip in mimicry of Agu’s peculiar idiom in Beast of No Nation. But does it mean his parents ‘are not speaking’ Igbo at home to them? And how can he effectively represent a culture whose language he ‘cannot not speaking’? "They did", he is replying. "My sister speaks. But my response to that is that I represent a combination of cultures. So, it’s my destiny and regret that I don’t speak Igbo", he ‘is admitting and making you to feeling for him’.

Truth be told, Uzo Iweala may be representing two cultures but he has no doubt about the literary tradition whose flag he proudly flies. He would easily tell you that if Achebe and his generation of writers had not done what they did to African writing, the world would not have been so receptive of his writing. He admits that even his stylish experiment had been done before by Ken Saro-Wiwa in Souza Boy and octogenarian poet, Gabriel Okara in The Voice. But while Saro-Wiwa had referred to his own experiment as Rotten English, Iweala calls his "Experimental English". "The beauty of having models like Achebe, Saro-Wiwa and Amos Tutuola is that the way the African writer tells a story is quite different from the way the European writer tells a story. Our story telling comes from oral tradition. That I came out with something like this and people started appreciating it comes from the fact that people like Achebe were there before. They sort of got people to tune to African writing and what it means to be an African writer. This has made things easier for people like me"; he is telling you and also pointing out that his deeply fond of Nigeria’s Booker Prize winner Ben Okri.

This perhaps explains the bold intrusion of ringing poetic voices in the narrative style of Beasts of No Nation. But beyond the use of language, a silent thread appears to yoke Achebe, Chimamanda Adichie of Purple Hibiscus and Iweala together. Like Achebe and Adichie, Uzo Iweala may be heading back to medical school. First it started as his parents’ wish but now Uzo is hooked on it. He thinks that medical practice might offer him a more direct route to fulfilling his desire to do a humanitarian work. Achebe and Adichie had to refocus from medical school and re-dedicate themselves to writing.

At the moment, however, Uzo is going through a brief spell of self-assurance that a return to a medical school might help him make a real difference in life. When you have made a mark at 22, life seems such an easy passage. "Medicine is still a possibility", he says whimsically. "A lot of what I want to do is not just writing. Medicine and writing require dedication. Can I do both? May be I can, may be I can’t. But the bottom line is try. I have spoken to Chimamanda about it and she said if you know you are not going to be dedicated to medicine then I shouldn’t do it. I can understand that. Many doctors have also told me that it’s not what it seems from the outside. But like I said, I got it at the back of my mind".

It had better stay at the back of his mind. Uzo Iweala has shown so much promise in his debut effort that it would be a huge waste of talent to lose him to medical practice. His passion for writing runs as deep as his younger brother’s passion for music.

Okechukwu Iweala, his younger brother started taking rap music serious before he turned 14 and had cut his first real song at 14. In the Washington DC underground rap scene where he has made a name, Okechukwu is known as Oke (pronounced as oak). The young rapper belongs to the rare breed of rappers who use the form as a vehicle for social consciousness. "My younger brother is very, very intelligent", Uzo is saying of his brother who is also a Harvard undergraduate. "When we were growing up, we were reading almost 40 books per summer. Not just any book but books like Carl Max and all those theorists and even economics books. So, his lyrics are always socially conscious, none of these gangster stuff. He’s done a number of albums and written a number of songs".

Upon your request, he rolls out a pair of earphones, plugs it into his laptop and spins some of Okechukwu’s head thumping songs. The track Brother has the rapper’s smooth, tightly controlled flow flip-flopping all over the heavy rhythm of Fela’s African Woman.


The one titled Work Harder comes slamming with deep rich hip-hop beats and highly introspective lyrics that prick the consciousness of the listener and invokes memories of the politically on point offering of late 2Pac Shakur. Oke was only 20 when he did the song. Motivation, a track he did when he turned 14 comes with a child’s pricking voice but again the tightly controlled rhythm and lyrical content of the smooth flow belong to a socially conscious rapper who is wary of his environment.

As you listen from one track to the other, you begin to get an inkling of the kind of family setting that the Iwealas have. It must be a home full of self-expression. "We have a lot of companionship in my house. My siblings and I get along very well. We are constantly talking to each other about different things and we have ideas bouncing up and down all the time. I think everybody feels pressure to succeed in this world.

Do my parents put pressure on us? No more than the average Nigerian parents put on their kids. I am just lucky", says the young author whose promise the critical world has delightfully acknowledged. Well, isn’t gratifying to note that he understands that he is lucky even with all his gifts? But let’s call things by their names – there’s more than luck in the molding of Uzo Iweala’s character, gift and personality. After all, how many other privileged children of the rich and powerful in Nigeria have done something ennobling and enduring? Certainly, not now that some children of some public officials are hitting headlines for acquiring eye-popping properties in Manhattan when they barely out of school.