Creative Process

Description: Iweala talks about how his interactions with people inspire him and why he thought he could write the voice of a child soldier.

Question: What is your creative process?

Transcript: It’s just watching people. It’s interactions with each other, my interactions with people. Like I’m really just fascinated by how we deal with each other as human beings. And if anything, that’s probably the primary inspiration for anything and everything that I write. You know of course then you . . . you have all the other things that everybody always likes to hear about, which are like jazz music and this and that. And I’m like . . . I’m one of those people. Shoot. 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. But you know again, it all goes back to like, oh, I remember seeing this woman in a café on the corner and she looked like this. What was going on there? You know what did I think was going on? What can I say about that? Or you know I read this newspaper article about child soldiers, and it’s like, oh shoot, there’s a lot to be said about this. What stories can come out of this? That’s . . . that’s really what it is, and that’s the biggest inspiration.

I think the thing that . . . that really bothers me, right, about work and work that I think doesn’t . . . that I don’t really like is work that doesn’t strive to . . . to look at multiple perspectives; work that oversimplifies things. That really irritates me, whether it’s in music . . . Like you look at, for example, rap music now versus rap music from, you know, a decade ago, two decades ago. I mean that was when I was like, what, four years old or something? You know but you go back and you look at . . . I had uncles who were listening to that sort of stuff. And you know when I got into high school or whatever, there were certain artists that were out. I mean you know that’s just one of the things. And it’s not just rap. It’s like music in general. I mean you look at some of these artists that come out now, and it seems so oversimplified.

Question: Why did you feel you could be the voice of a child soldier?

Transcript: I mean like you know when you . . . like when I . . . Every time I’ve gone back and read an interview or heard that said, I mean it does sound really absurd, doesn’t it? I mean like you read a magazine article and, oh shoot, now you think you can say whatever. It’s pretty . . . I mean like it is a little . . . it sounds a little silly. But I think the thing is you get . . . these things come from all angles, and you can . . . you can take something and blow it open and really try to explore it. I mean do I feel like I have the right to speak for anybody? I don’t really. I mean I don’t . . . I don’t feel that way, and that wasn’t the intention. It wasn’t for me to say, “I’m speaking for these sets of people,” because that . . . that would be absurd. Like the idea is let’s tell the story, and let’s see if we can add to a discussion, right? I don’t . . . I mean I don’t think . . . I think it’s the terminology. I think that speaking for, right, is very different from speaking, right? And when you assume that you have the right to speak for . . . When you say that, “I am speaking for these people,” you put yourself in a position of power over a certain set of people. You put yourself in a position of authority which I don’t think I have at all. I don’t have the right to speak for any child soldiers, and I’ve never thought I had. What I wanted to do is see was there a way to put out this story and see if I had . . . if we can . . . you know see if we can talk about some things and see if there are voices that can come into this discussion; see if I can add a voice. If anybody else has anything to say, come on. Let’s add this voice and let’s see what we can learn from this. And that’s . . . that was the idea. I mean it just happens . . . I mean it so happens that for me, the way of going about doing that was trying to write a novel. But you know there are people who . . . who have done that in many different ways; you know whether it’s through discussions; whether it’s through painting, or music, or whatever; and you see . . . But let me . . . let me see what I can say in particular about this sort of thing. And you know like it just . . . it came out the way it came out. It came out after listening to a lot of people speak about their own experiences. It came out after reading about a lot of people’s different experiences. It came out after studying different ways of . . . sort of the different ways that people are affected by trauma or violence. I mean it came out after listening . . . Really it came out after listening. I think that’s what storytelling . . . that’s what living is about. It’s about listening to and assimilating other people’s experiences into your own, and then using that to guide how you . . . how you move about in the world. I mean I . . . I think creating a story or writing a book is no different from living in that sense. And I mean that was really what it was.

Recorded on: 10/7/07