Uzodinma Iweala smiles quickly, the sort of smile that is disarming and genuine. The kind of smile capable of navigating the no man’s land between two cultures — Iweala knows a thing or two about that.

Raised in Washington, D.C., by Nigerian parents (his mother, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is finance minister of Nigeria), Iweala was immersed in both English and Igbo, Star Trek and Chinua Achebe. There were yearly family trips back to Nigeria — to the chaos of family and food and culture. In each place, he was both home and not home.

Though Iweala’s education and early cultural experiences would be rooted in the United States, Nigeria still made up a large part of his identity and heritage. While growing up, there was a near-constant hum to remember where you are from.

“When I was younger,” Iweala says, “I took that to mean you had to be true to this place [Nigeria]. Now, I take that to mean there’s a lot of exploration to do in order to understand what this place is to you. You should give it the attention it needs — and that it demands of you — so that you know who you are.”

During his junior year at Harvard University, Iweala listened to a talk by China Keitetsa, a former Ugandan child soldier. That talk, and their conversation afterward, prompted some soul-searching that eventually led Iweala back to a story he’d written in high school, a response to a Newsweek article on child soldiers in Sierra Leone. That three-page story became 50 pages, then his honors thesis and, eventually, his first novel.

Beasts of No Nation, the story of a young boy conscripted as a guerilla fighter, garnered several awards and quite a bit of attention for the then 23-year-old.

The topic or timing of this first book didn’t surprise those close to Iweala. “Uzo is always aiming at excellence,” says Elliot Aguilar, who met Iweala during their first year of college. “But it’s also paired with this deep concern for people and the state of the world. He can and does enjoy life, but he’s always got this strong concern for how things are for everyone.”

To research Beasts of No Nation, Iweala had to read a lot — first-person accounts, U.N. reports and child psychology textbooks. Though the setting remains unnamed throughout the novel, the landscape, he has said, is Nigeria. So he spent time talking with family and friends about their own experiences during the Nigerian civil war, exploring what it was like to live with violence and the after-effects on community.

Iweala initially planned to pursue further degrees in English, but acting on the advice of the advisor who had guided him through his honors thesis — the writer Jamaica Kincaid — he decided to attend medical school.

“I think what she was trying to say was, go and get some real life experience,” he says. “Interact with people, see what there is in the world and also really challenge yourself.”

In 2011, Iweala graduated from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Afterward, still writing on the side, he began working on health policy issues in sub-Saharan Africa as part of the Millennium Villages Project, headquartered at Columbia University and the United Nations.

There, Iweala settled into an office across the hall from someone who would become a close friend. Julie Kennedy remembers the long conversations and debates they often had over politics, current events and social justice.

“Uzo’s a seeker,” she says. “That’s a real strength in a friend, because you push each other to not be satisfied with where you are and what you’ve accomplished, but continue to seek a greater good or a greater truth or a greater accomplishment.”

For example, while learning about health care and various disease states, Iweala began to notice patterns in rhetoric when referring to HIV/AIDS in Africa.

“There’s this idea of otherness or exoticness” when people outside the continent discuss HIV/AIDS victims in Africa, he explains. “And then there’s the idea of being thankful to an outsider who comes in and brings help or a cure or some sort of treatment.”

The promotion of a helpless “other” didn’t fit what Iweala had himself experienced in Nigeria, so he traveled back to do research. “I wanted to bring a whole new set of voices to the foreground, give people a chance to narrate their own stories.”

Iweala recently turned 30, only three months after the release of his second book, Our Kind of People — one that allowed him to encounter his homeland as a researcher, a writer and, more importantly, a Nigerian.

Our Kind of People is a book about real people, not numbers; about local initiatives and successes, not outsiders swooping in with miracles. And ultimately, it’s about hope — people learning to live and thrive with a disease that doesn’t yet have a cure and that still carries plenty of stigma.

“I hope this book shifts perspectives, starts a new conversation,” he says. “You want people to feel like you touched them in some way, left their lives more positive.” As a medical student and a writer, as an American and a Nigerian, as a thinker and an activist, Iweala is determined to leave the world a little better off than he found it. And to discover himself in the process.