I'm an obsessive writer who needs and loves revision. Writing helps me learn and helps me teach.

In essay writing, I'm trying to push the form of expository writing. I'm trying to remember, trying to reckon, trying to find connections with the world, the nation and me, but I'm always trying to push the form, too, without being too obvious that I'm trying to push the form.

First of all, the novel should be a critique of the novels that have come before it in a language that broadens the audience of American literature. Second, it's really got to be invested in a number of what-if questions.

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

One of the problems with a lot of "confessional" writing is that it starts and stops with the confessional and doesn't really tie the "I" into a "we" at all. I'm still surprised at how mad critics get at that kind of confessional writing.

I'm accountable - this sounds emo - to black American writing, Southern writing, Southern black American writing, American writing and my people. That's kind of what keeps me accountable.

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