The Sellout is about friends and relatives who have touched me in real ways.

I remember going to see Amiri Baraka. It wasn't actually too long before he died. He said, "You've got to write to change the world!" I was like, "Not me, no, no, no, no."

Sometimes I would get frustrated, I'd think, "You know, this is a good book, how come no one is paying attention to it?" So it's nice to have some recognition.

I'm hugely honored [with the Man Booker Prize].

In The Sellout I tried to capture how we can talk and see race, how we see urbanity, and how we see our history.

Sometimes I highjack memories. Sometimes I switch them around. Sometimes they're just in the background, like some little bass note. Those things have carried me through, especially when I first started writing. They're still there, but more in the distance these days.

My good friend, the poet Kofi Natambu, once said, "Contradiction is how we operate."