I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty.
Feminist: A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.
You deserve to take up space.
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.
How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.
Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.
Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice.
I have many problems in my life, but I don’t think that identity is one of them.
Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it into a prosaic partnership.
I don’t believe that art and politics or social issues must be separated. In writing about marriage, for example, money can be a big factor, and money is linked to earning, and earning is influenced by politics.
I think human beings exist in a social world. I write realistic fiction, and so it isn’t that surprising that the social realities of their existence would be part of the story.
I am interested in challenging the mainstream ideas of what is beautiful and what is acceptable.