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

I've written a little bit in Germany.

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.

That's such a great book [Bloods]. That's a perfect way to articulate this thing that we're talking about. Just because someone is a black general, doesn't mean this person is going to have a certain outlook on it.

I think there's nothing new going on. Except that, you're even more public than you've ever been.There's some good and some bad to that.

I had a student once come up to me and we were talking about this incident, and, of course, I never had the right thing to say. But later on, I realized I should have said: Don't write about trying to change the world, just write about a changed world or a world that's not changing. Let that do the work.

I think, and a lot of that has to do with where I grew up in California; [status] isn't something I think about that much.