I think that most writers who are trying to write important and difficult books are in many ways putting their own humanity into question. Sometimes the journey is finding out where you stand in relationship to your own humanity and to the humanity of others.

What I do is create a lens through my work that corrects my readers' cognitive dissonance and says: you will see all of it - not what you want or what makes you comfortable, but all of it. And you will not erase what displeases you.

I think it's an aggregation of all of the small acts that are really transformative. I think a group of small acts transform the individual. And maybe when the individual transforms, collectively we transform.

My books are often shelved around those of Chinua Achebe and Margaret Atwood, or Chimamanda Adichie and Monica Ali. All of this depends, of course, on the bookstore and how conversant the shelf stocker is with the alphabet.

People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes

Your anatomy is a mystery that nobody bothers explaining to us. Even when we think we have mastered one woman's body, every body is different.

The truth is that History, with its imposing capital H, is simply the amalgamation of many quotidian lives lived in very ordinary ways. History is always personal. If you read Holocaust survivor or American slavery survivor narratives, you realize all too well that these great Historical moments were personal to someone at some time.