I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair - yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.

At some point I was a HappyAfricanFeminist who does not hate men. And who likes lip gloss and who wears high heels for herself but not for men.

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.

How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.

This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.

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

I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty.