I wish every American explored the importance of novel writing, identity, honesty, character and place in fresh-ass ways.

Long Division has a lot of Afrosurrealist impulses. I think the book was more Afrofuturist when it was like 700 pages.

I wanted to create a book that was unafraid of black bodies, yet super interested in thinking about the relationship of love to body and sexuality without relying on tired understandings of "gay" "bi" or "straight."

I'm a black writer from Mississippi. That's what I most consider myself.

Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue.

Not so deep down, we all know that safety is an illusion, that only character melds us together. That’s why most of us do everything we can (healthy and unhealthy) to ward off that real feeling of standing alone so close to the edge of the world.

I'm not good enough as a person and definitely not good enough as a writer.