My dad fought in Korea. It was one of the first stories I remember hearing about.

The anger and fear are so global. And of course, we live where we live and there's a hierarchy to who is worth what. It's been going on for a long, long time.

If all the students who slept through lectures were laid end to end, they'd all be a lot more comfortable. If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

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

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

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.

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