If you don't understand, ask questions. If you're uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It's easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here's to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.

We teach girls shame; close your legs, cover yourself, we make them feel as though by being born female they're already guilty of something.

You deserve to take up space.

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

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.

The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre.

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.