For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: "Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison."

A person who acquires English has access to all the things that that language makes possible.

Writing in African languages became a topic of discussion in conferences, in schools, in classrooms; the issue is always being raised - so it's no longer "in the closet," as it were. It's part of the discussion going on about the future of African literature. The same questions are there in Native American languages, they're there in native Canadian languages, they're there is some marginalized European languages, like say, Irish. So what I thought was just an African problem or issue is actually a global phenomenon about relationships of power between languages and cultures.

It was a revelation for me, in a practical sense, that you could write in an African language and still reach an audience beyond that language through the art of translation.

What's good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.

Life, struggle, even amidst pain and blood and poverty, seemed beautiful.

Any writer likes to be near the area which is the location of his work.