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.

I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender.

There is something very quiet and reserved and pessimistic about Obama's temperament that is deeply un-American. There are those people who claim, "Oh, he wasn't born here" - all that is nonsense.

My parents didn't really restrict my movement, so I got involved in the underground music scene and the activism scene; I was doing some volunteering in food relief. I spent a lot of time throughout the city in poor areas, even though my family lived in a wealthy area.

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

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