good evening from los angeles. novels including american and half of a yellow son and rightly praised for the window to open to other cultures, particularly race, identity and immigration. half of a yellow son is paid into a movie for andy newton and it's making a television premiere on various stars channels. year glad you could join us. our conversation coming up right now.#

best selling novelist is one of the world's most acclaimed novelist won the national circle award and selected by "the new york times" as one of the ten best books of 2013. her earlier novel half of a yellow son deals with the civil

war and broke out in nigeria in 1967 is turn into a movie. it can be seen on various stars channels. we'll start our conversation with a screen from half of a yellow son. >> those soldiers are true heroes. >> this is the send of corruption. [ laughter ] >> i knew you were a friend of my father. >> bbc is calling it and they have a point. that's the way it was killed after all. >> the government, the bbc should ask the people who put the government to dominate everybody. >> if we had more men in this country, we would not be where we are today. >> is he a communist? >> you americans are so predictable. do we have time to worry about screen? >> not too bad. >> yeah, how do you think they did with the adaptation?

>> i like it. i wasn't sure that i would because you never know but i like it. i like the art of it. i think it captures nigerians that are really beautiful but i think it's different, this film is very different from a book. i wasn't expecting the film to be exactly the book but captures the spirit. >> what was it about the book that was essential for you to not be lost in the film? >> the sense that when people are in a war and in this case, they find ways to retain humanity. for me, i wanted the novel to be a human story and i think the film does that. so it's about war, which i think is important but it's really about how people in the middle of war, people get married, people fall in love. >> you may have answered the question i want to ask but let me ask you anyway, given you weren't born in '67, you don't have to be around to write about history, obviously, but what was it about that particular war

that you wanted to bring to life in your novel in your text? >> well, i wasn't alive, you're right, but i feel as though i n inherited the shadow of that parai didn't do. my parents lost everything they owned. my family's path was affected by the war and i wanted to remember, i think that nigeria countries in africa there is a willingful forgetting. we're not -- there is a sense in which we don't remember recent past and i think it's important to remember and so i think what i wanted the film to do is tell a human story but also be a collective way of remembering what happened. >> yeah. you said something a moment ago i find fascinating and it is something that's applicable, not just to the people of nigeria but true of americans, this notion of willingful forgetting, willful forgetting. what is behind that for you?

motivates that in your country? >> well, i think that the people who -- so the war is fairly recent when you really think about it and people active in the war, so there are people for whom it is beneficial if we don't remember and i think it's this idea that even wants to be comfortable. let's let things be. we all need to be comfortable, which applies to the u.s., there is a sense in which american history, american's racial history, we're supposed to forget because everybody is supposed to be kept comfortable. in nigeria because the effort is a contested part of the history, there are differing versions what happened. it's really contested. because of that, it's just more comfortable if we don't talk about it. i think that it's important to9& remember because i think the consequences of not talking about what happened is actually

much more dangerous than the consequences of talking about it. >> what to you regard? do you see those consequences as today, the consequences of not talking about it? >> that we repeat history. i think many of the things that are happening in nigeria today, if we go back to 1967 we can explain them and we have po politicized ethnicity and it's happening now and i think if we're very conscious of what happened 50 years ago, we can remember it. happened 50 years ago, wos an

>> are there conditions that you think, other conditions that you can imagine that might make it possible for those persons to be willing to be made uncomfortable. >> if there is no answer to that

question, that means what you're suggesting is this issue will never be addressed. >> i think that people -- i think it can take a certain kind of leadership. it will take time. i think that it's possible. if you have certain kinds of leaders, a trend of mine said meet meeting people can make that conversation happen. i think that it's possible. it hasn't happened. i mean, people talk and it hasn't happened. it's main stream discourse. it's not talked about open and honest. >> if that conversation hasn't happened in the era of obama, what do you think it might acquire? will it take for us to have that conversation? >> i think that obama can make it possible.

obama being president occupies a fragile place and i think it says something. the way obama has gone about not addressing it in a way that's direct and helpful, in someways that's an indictment of america's racial issues because he, i think, asíñ the first bla man to be president is in a position where he has to be extra careful. the next person who not necessarily is black but who thinks that this conversation is important, i think it makes it more possible for that person to start it. >> and if that person is a woman? >> even better. [ laughter ] >> hilary wins, yes. >> okay. you referenced american, your best seller, one of the ten best

books of the year now out in paper back. for those who haven't read this, what's the story line here? >> it's a love story but it's also social commentary. it's a young woman who lives in nigeria and comes to the u.s. and has the man she loves who leaves nigeria and goes to england and about many things and one of the things i wanted to do, i wanted to write and as an outsider, a person who came to the u.s. and came as black because i didn't think of myself as black in nigeria so race me in the u.s. and i wanted to write about that and how strange it can be but also i wanted to write about the kind of ingrags that is familiar to me. when we hear about african immigrating, we think about people running away from burned villages and war and poverty and that's important to tell. it's not the story i know. i wanted to write about the africa i know, the middle class

educated people leaving not because villages were burned but they want more choices throughout human history, people left their homes looking for me and so that is what i hoped -- also, i think it's quite funny, if i may say so myself. >> when you said a moment ago that you didn't think of yourself as black until you came to the u.s., that raises two questions, let me ask them in the proper order. question one, what did you think of yourself as in nigeria? >> i thought of myself as nigerian but again, i think america is very interesting because it's the one place where identity is such a central thing for people. it really isn't in many parts of the world. >> is that a good thing or bad thing? >> i mean, i don't think it's good or bad but i think it can be bad and i think it's -- it can be okay but i think it's also because america's history as a country that has so many people -- it's a country of

immigrants, everybody came from somewhere. because of that identity becomes a thing. in nigeria it wasn't. so in certain cases, but i didn't really think as myself as anything but to come to the u.s., i became black and i also became african in the u.s. because coming from nigeria meant people would turn around and say you're african, tell me asking. >> how did you navigate the journey of becoming black and african. i woke up this way in this country, so i haven't had that journey. how did you navigate this journey of becoming black? >> for me, learning that i was black, it wasn't -- i have to say to people that i'm happily black but i couldn't change anything about this. this is the most beautiful thing

but coming to the u.s., it was realizing that this identity came with baggage and i remember my under grad, my first year in the u.s., i had just come and the first essay i wrote in a class, the professor says this is the west essay and who wrote it and i raised my hand and he looked surprise. he didn't expect the person who wrote the best esse to be black and i guess also my name doesn't sound figuratively black. it's a strange name that could be anything, and i remember just realizing that that's what it meant, that black was all of this negative stereo types and so for awhile i didn't want to be identified as black. i found myself pushing away frow that identity and wanting to be scene as nigerian because i felt that it was my way of separating myself from this group that had really terrible stereo types. what it took for me is reading

and learning and watching. so i read a lot of of can american history. i just watched america. and so i went and became like you know what? i'm black. i'm all these other things but i'm black and it's always a choice because i think when you're knnot born in the u.s., someways identifying with black becomes a political choice because it means you're willing to acre knowledno acre knowledg knowledge it's a reality. i know immigrants from the caribbean and africa who say things like race is over blown. it doesn't matter. so for me, it's a to lit kill choice. for me it isn't.

because i think the way i navigate race is different from the way somebody who is born in the u.s. would because the thing for me as a nigerian that don't just resonate as much, i think. >> so that's your story of your journey of becoming black in america. the other part is this african piece. if i had a dime for every horror story about encounters withtmtr& african americans when they arrive, i wealthy. do you have horror stories about learning to get along with and to embrace african americans in this country? >> no. >> yeah. >> i'm so sorry to disappoint. >> no, i'm so glad to hear that. i'm not disappointed at all. i heard so many. >> here is the thing. i think that, you know t african americans are americans and there are certain things one can

generalized about americans. it's a general -- it's an ignorance. so people, you come from a different part of the world like what, nigeria? is that like honduras? so i think that ignorance plays into -- i think that often africans expect african americans to somehow know more than others because of how we look alike. so surely you must know about africa. but there are americans that don't. i really don't. i have really good friends who are african american and maybe it has something to do i came here from school and i had many friends in under grad and grad school and their conversations that were had. they are not always comfortable but i think important and one of such conversations is, and i write about it in the book, i make fun of it, which i think is one way of closing the

conversation about slavery to say africans sold us. i think it's so simplistic.]n it's a way -- if you say it, there is nothing left to be said. saying that nithat gates the fa it benefitted a particular group of people and had those evil african chiefs not sold them, they would have a way to get them across the atlantic and so no, sadly, no horror stories. i'll have to invent some for next time. >> don't, please. i'm happy to hear your journey was a road well paved and not a bunch of potholes in terms of relationships with black americans. how have you held on to that essential african part of you because the one thing that america does do is offer the opportunity for you to asemilate and many people come here and take the opportunity to do that and they have forgotten and left

sometimes deliberately everything about who they essentially are or were in this country. how have you held onto the essential african parts of you? american accent, eating nigerian fo food. when i came to the u.s. i did a great american accent for awhile. can i have some water, please? it takes so much energy to do it. i spent my whole life saying water and to say water, it's so much work and i become a fake version of myself. you never reach your potential. so i feel as though the energy i use in saying can i have some water, please, i can use it and do something useful so i chose that customer service people in the store will say what's that, ma'am? but i'll repeat myself in a way they can understand but also, i think it's having come here when

i was 19. i was i think in someways formed and being raised in the family where it was very clear, my parents are lovely people and my dad is a professor, we're able people and this is what we are and i carry it with me. the reason i'm comfortable in the world and i am, really is because of that. i carry that in me wherever i go. >> were you sent here or did you choose to come here. >> i chose to come here because i was fielding the study of medicine. i was studying to be a doctor. after a year, i realized that was not for me. >> how did your father handle that? >> he already had a doctor. my sister is a doctor. i'm one of six children. he has a doctor, pharmacist, engineer and the kids did the proper thing. so i think they decided they

could sacrifice a strange one who wanted to write. so they are like all right. >> how did writing become your thing?miqj"!=] did you know th calling in the world? >> you know, i don't know and i didn't know. i was writing stories and that's the one thing, that's the one thing that constantly made me truly happy. that's the one thing i love. happy to be published and read and it's still a wonder to me that people pay money to read what i wrote, but the thing that i love is the writing, and i've always loved it, always, always. >> is it always and forever going to be fiction? >> never say never. >> yeah. >> i don't know. >> i raise that because of the issues you raise in your novels are real world issues. >> they are. >> and you face it from a fictional perspective but reading about some subjects from

a non-fiction. >> i think fiction affords something that non-fiction doesn't. i think that the stories you can tell and for me fiction doesn't mean it's a lie but i think fiction can be truer than non-fiction. if i wrote non-fiction about the war, i would have to protect people's identity and think about the ethics of telling certain stories and so i think for me fiction just seems much more, i don't know, much more powerful way of getting to certain stories that are difficult. >> what for you then is the blessing, the joy of being a /i writer? i hear your point you're surprised people pay to read your stuff, indeed they do and pay well to read your stuff and this being in paper back, if they weren't buying it it wouldn't go to paper back. what's the blessing and joy for you in being a writer? >> i think it's that people read

what i wrote and it mean something and not just entertainment, which i think is important but that women read it and they say to me, you make me feel stronger. i feel validated or somebody said to me once that half of a yellow son was part of her story and tell her family what happened to her and she hadn't talked about it until she read the book. i think it's that possibility of incredible parts that you can tell a story and it can move somebody and really matters. that i will never stop being just -- i will never stop being grateful and moved by that. >> so early into your career when you have your writing career and this claim, do you claim you have 9 million plus views of your talks on the internet? 9 million is a lot of views for a ted talker, ted talk or two. when you have this claim early

on in your career,íñ how do you process that and does that put a certain kind of, for lack of a better word pressure on you for better writing? >> no. >> you don't feel that at all? >> the pressure is the fear that i felt from the beginning which is you're sitting down and worried you're not going to write a good sentence. i don't really remember these things and i'm sitting down at my desk because i enjoy really lovely people reading the book. it's gotten recognition. it's a lovely feeling. when i sit down in my sud dtudy don't remember because the terror that comes with creating is there. so i'm sitting there thinking i will never write a good sentence again and i don't want to be if i can't. it's the terror of creating. it's always there. and so no, if anything, it's maybe if i finish a book or a story just before it comes out, i have the anxiety of what have i done?

not during the creative process, you know. >> you're doing it well and we're all the better for how well you do it. a national best seller on paper back, it's a novel. she's the author and her book turned into a film now, half of a yellow son is seen on various stars channels. an honor to have you and thanks for your time. >> thank you. >> that's our show tonight, thanks for watching and as >> that's our show tonight, thanks for watching and as always, keep the faith.xp -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com

>> rose: welcome to the program. tonight, leon panetta, former secretary of defense, director of the c.i.a. director of the office of management budget and chief of staff of president clinton talks about his new memoir thurty of fights a memoir of leadership and war and peace and about president obama. >> i think that the president and congress and whatever reason cannot confront the issues important to this country. >> rose: bob gates said the same thing in his book. >> i think that we are looking at a moment in time in the 21st century where the issue is going to be are we going to governor this country by leadership or by cs.