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

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

It's all the same for me, how I teach, how I write, how I think.

I forget how beautiful and calm California is. It's not so much about the place, but also the age that I came to the place and, well, other things. New York is hard.

I try to be accommodating, but I'm pretty much a loner.

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

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