I can write with authority only about what I know well, which means that I end up using surface details of my own life in my fiction.

This is our world, although the people who drew this map decided to put their own land on top of ours. There is no top or bottom, you see.

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.

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

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

Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.

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