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

When it comes to dressing well, American culture is so self-fulfilled that it has not only disregarded this courtesy of self-presentation, but has turned that disregard into a virtue. "We are too superior/busy/cool/not-uptight to bother about how we look to other people, and so we can wear pajamas to school and underwear to the mall.

You Americans, always peering under people's beds to look for communism.

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

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

The only reason race matters is because of racism.

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.