In primary school in south-eastern Nigeria, I was taught that Hosni Mubarak was the president of Egypt. I learned the same thing in secondary school. In university, Mubarak was still president of Egypt. I came to assume, subconsciously, that he - and others like Paul Biya in Cameroon and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - would never leave.

I was stained by failure.

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

Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be, rather than recognising how we are.

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

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.