People from different parts of the world can respond to the same story if it says something to them about their own history and their own experience.

Literature, whether handed down by word or mouth or in print, gives us a second handle on reality.

There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.

I think back to the old people I knew when I was growing up, and they always seemed larger than life.

There is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless.

What I can say is that it was clear to many of us that an indigenous African literary renaissance was overdue. A major objective was to challenge stereotypes, myths, and the image of ourselves and our continent, and to recast them through stories- prose, poetry, essays, and books for our children. That was my overall goal.