essay by uzodinma iweala

It is starting like this. I am coming home one day when the sun is already going to his home, to be finding one magazine just lying like that on the table. It is telling me many things like what is happening in this world. What president and normal man is doing. What is happening with internet and computer. And it is also telling me that in this world they are using children to be killing killing — killing each other and all the other person in their hometown. I am not knowing too much about this as I am young person and young person in America is normally not thinking too much about anything but sport and womans and music. But when I am seeing this kind thing in magazine, it is making me to stop and say Kai!

The above is from an essay by Uzodinma Iweala, author of the much talked about debut novel, Beasts of No Nation, told in the voice of an African child soldier, Agu. Interestingly, Iweala's essay is also written as Agu himself might have rendered it.

Read the rest of the essay here.