Narrative stories are nothing but models of karma and causality - how one thing leads to another. And a lot of narrative fiction is about causality that we don't immediately understand.

The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate.

I had a lot of expectations placed on me because I was already having some success with my short stories. That was not a good situation to be in. That by itself took a long time to overcome.

There's been a lot of talk about black men and the presence and absence of black men in positions of power in American culture.

Hip-hop is mostly what I listen to, other than jazz. I've given up on pop music and indie rock.

The hip-hop that I really connected with was Public Enemy, KRS-One, Ice Cube, and N.W.A. That late '80s and early '90s era. The beginning of gangster rap and the beginning of politically conscious rap. I had a very immature, adolescent feeling of, "Wow, I can really connect with these people through the stories they're telling in this music."

The gestures and the swagger and the attitude of black men is imitated everywhere in American culture, but people still find black men intolerable.