She wanted to ask him why they were all strangers who shared the same last name.

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

Stories matter. Many stories matter.

Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. It is about seeing the other person. I am very interested in relationships and, when I watch couples, sometimes I can sense a blindness has set in. They have stopped seeing each other. It is not easy to see another person.

I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.

It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never been clearer than in the view of Africa from the American media, in which we are shown poverty and conflicts without any context.

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