Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.
When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.
Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You’re caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn’t go running with Curt today because you don’t want to sweat out this straightness. You’re always battling to make your hair do what it wasn’t meant to do.
The higher you go, the fewer women there are.
Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?
They themselves mocked Africa, trading stories of absurdity, of stupidity, and they felt safe to mock, because it was a mockery born of longing, and of the heartbroken desire to see a place made whole again.
Stories matter. Many stories matter.
This is our world, although the people who drew this map decided to put their own land on top of ours. There is no top or bottom, you see.
Greatness depends on where you are coming from.
The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre.
Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.
I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.
Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.
I divide my time between Columbia, Maryland, and Lagos, Nigeria.
Perhaps it is time to debate culture. The common story is that in real African culture, before it was tainted by the West, gender roles were rigid and women were contentedly oppressed.
I didn’t know I was even supposed to HAVE issues until I came to America.
If you followed the media you’d think that everybody in Africa was starving to death, and that’s not the case; so it’s important to engage with the other Africa.
Because I am female, I’m expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important.
People have crushes on priests all the time, you know. It’s exciting to have to deal with God as a rival.
Racism should never have happened and so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it.