Ethiopian-American writer
Maaza Mengiste (born 1974) is an Ethiopian-American author.
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Fiction gives me the right to do it. It's not an autobiography. I did have the right to tell this story. My position is that you write from the place that you are, and it's not a detriment, and it's not something that undermines any kind of authenticity. I had to understand very early on that I'm writing this book as an American, with very, very strong ties to Ethiopia—and a deep love, my family is there—but ultimately, I am writing it with an American way of looking at things. That doesn't mean that the story is not authentic. Or then you have to question what "authentic" means…
I write fiction that revolves around archival research and historical events. What I search for in documented history: what happened, is not necessarily what I seek when I write it down: what was it like, and what was left out. I go back to something Breyten Breytenbach once told me, that fiction tells a truth that history cannot. I lean into fictive truths.
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There is no war that does not impact the lives of children, so children and what happens to them in migration or conflict are important to me, and we generally don’t hear enough about it. And it’s difficult because they don’t know yet how to express their perspectives very well, so I’m interested in that, how their vocabulary doesn’t yet capture what they are seeing and feeling. As a writer, that becomes an interesting vehicle through which to tell a story.