Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal to one dead white person.

Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.

When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.

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

You Americans, always peering under people's beds to look for communism.

I have my father's lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls it my cerebral palsy mouth. I am very much a daddy's girl, and even though I would rather my smile wasn't crooked, there is something moving for me about having a mouth exactly like my father's.

Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.