We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls 'You can have ambition, but not too much'.

In America, racism exists but racists are all gone. Racists belong to the past. Racists are the thin-lipped mean white people in the movies about the civil rights era. Here's the thing: the manifestation of racism has changed but the language has not. So if you haven't lynched somebody then you can't be called a racist. If you're not a bloodsucking monster, then you can't be called a racist. Somebody has to be able to say that racists are not monsters.

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 can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

There has always been a strange dissonance between the public and the private in Nigeria.

I was stained by failure.

I divide my time between Columbia, Maryland, and Lagos, Nigeria.