It's only when an American steps outside of their own culture that you see how integral it is.

You think about every piece of idiomatic speech adopted by white men over the past ten or twenty years; virtually all of it comes from hip-hop.

Prajna is insight into the world. And a lot of that insight has to do with karma and the way karma affects our lives.

The politics of transgender identity are really complicated. And the debate over how much of gender is biological and how much of it is socially constructed is a very complex debate.

Only when you leave do you appreciate what binds American people and our cultural experience together.

I never really had novel-writing instruction like people do in MFA programs.

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."