Lecture: Jimmie Briggs
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Smiling nervously, Jimmie Briggs addressed the audience in the fifth floor atrium of the NYU Department of Journalism building. Briggs was talking about the difficult subject of his first book, Innocents Lost: When Child Soldiers Go to War.
A freelance journalist funded entirely by grants and fellowships, Briggs traveled to five countries over the course of six years in order to research Innocents Lost, his study of the impact of war on child soldiers and their families. He chose Rwanda, Uganda, Colombia, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan, countries he believed the U.S. newsmedia often left out of the "American limelight."
In each country, Briggs focused on one aspect of the issue of children in conflict that he believed was "off the [American public's] radar." In Rwanda, he focused on what he believed to be the government's harshly punitive response to crimes committed by children. In Colombia, he explored the "mental terrain of [veteran] child soldiers." In Uganda, he interviewed the parents and teachers who had remained behind after their children and students had been abducted, forced to fight in the war in Uganda. Because only boys are used in most combats, the preponderance of girls in the fighting ranks of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka piqued Briggs' interest in that country. In Afghanistan, he unearthed the story of the 14-year-old boy who according to Briggs killed Nathan Ross Chapman, the first American soldier to die in combat during Operation Enduring Freedom—an attack that also took the boy's life.
Battle-scarred Afghanistan is a long way from the all-male historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where Briggs took a degree in 1991 in philosophy—-then decided that he wanted to be a journalist. Never having taken a journalism course, he began his career in 1992 rather inauspiciously, he said, as a mail clerk at The Washington Post. After working his way up to writing freelance music reviews for the paper, he landed an internship at The Village Voice in the summer of 1993, after which he was offered a job as an assistant editor at "Black America's Newsmagazine," the now-defunct Emerge, in the fall of that year.
He left this position soon after to begin his five-year experience as a reporter for LIFE magazine, which he says prepared him to write Innocents Lost. After a 1997 trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, where he saw children wielding weapons for the first time, Briggs decided to write his book. In mid-1998, he left LIFE to begin the six-year project.
The emotional impact of his experiences—talking to interviewees like the woman who sobbed uncontrollably as she relived the night her daughter was killed—is why he wrote himself into his book, said Briggs.
It wasn't easy. In every country, Briggs was received with incredulity when he introduced himself to people as an American journalist. People expected to see a white man, he said; being black meant that he was either lying or was not "fully" American. After repeated visits, however, the reporter managed to overcome local stereotypes and win his interviewees' trust. Without this confidence, he said, he would not have been able to get his subjects to recount their wrenchingly painful experiences.
As close as Briggs was able to get to his subjects, the language barrier remained a constant hindrance, he said. Having a translator in between meant a loss of intimacy and ample cause for frustration. Briggs repeatedly had to ask the translators not to synopsize what was said, but to recount, word for word, his subjects' stories. He wanted verbatim translations, he said, so that only he could determine what was and was not worthy of being condensed.
As it turns out, the language barrier was only one of the hurdles Briggs had to clear. To talk face-to-face with his interviewees, Briggs had to brave physical dangers. Kidnappings of journalists were common in some of the countries he visited. Traveling alone, he was completely vulnerable, and depended on his guides for his safety. He told his audience of NYU journalism students and professors that the bulk of his traveling and reporting was done "on faith," meaning faith in his guides.
Though Briggs braced himself for physical threats, he was utterly unprepared for the emotional impact of his encounters, he said. In one case, he interviewed the bereaved mother of a former Tamil Tiger in Sri Lanka, in the very room of the house in which her daughter was brutally raped and murdered by military men. She sobbed uncontrollably as she relived the night her daughter was killed.
The emotional impact of his experiences, Briggs said, is why he wrote himself into his book. He told his listeners that in his opinion only first-person narrative could convey the emotions he felt as a chronicler of stories such as the Sri Lankan mother's. Only then could he make his reader feel the same indignation and horror that he felt, he said.
The use of children in war is not a new phenomenon, Briggs said, but the sexual abuse and sometimes forced child-bearing to which girls in war-torn countries such as Sri Lanka are subject is underreported, he believes. Briggs hopes to explore such issues more deeply in his next book.
Interviewing girls and women for Innocents Lost taught him to be compassionate and sensitive, he said. Being a man meant that he might inspire fear and suspicion in the girls and women he interviewed, many of whom had been physically brutalized, in some cases sexually assaulted. He learned when to be quiet, how much space to give them, how to adjust his body language. Addressing a largely female audience, Briggs lamented the general lack of coverage of women's issues in the newsmedia. He was excited to see so many women present and said that more female journalists will only help bring those seldom-covered issues to the forefront. "Your presence will only make us more sensitive to how stories are written," he said.
Upon hearing Briggs' plans for yet another book requiring years of traveling and reporting, a student asked him how he was able to maintain his energy and sanity during the six years of research for Innocents Lost.
It was the faith and trust of the people he spent time with that kept him going, he said.