If you start thinking about being likable you are not going to tell your story honestly.

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.

I didn't want to be apologetic about my love story, and I think to be willing to write about love you have to be willing to sound foolish. I wanted to write about foolish and goofy love and different relationships. I wanted to write about interracial relationships in a way that does not pretend as if race does not exist.

We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. If we have sons, we don't mind knowing about our sons' girlfriends, but our daughters' boyfriends? God forbid. But of course when the time is right, we expect those girls to bring back the perfect man to be their husband.

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?

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.

Show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.