I just rode cross-country and the thing I noticed is just how afraid everyone is, and how nervous and scared and angry people are. From my point of view, I don't think it's all necessarily justified, but I think that's easy for me to say.

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

Maybe I'm just sensitive to that person who's on the outside.

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

There are certain things that happen in New York that just don't happen anywhere else.

I wrote poems and an essay about that weird language. We still remember it to a certain extent, and it still comes up when we're all together. It's so fundamental to how I think.

It's weird because there is progress somehow. But there's so much that just feels the same. How important is that rank? How important is it that I am allowed to make these decisions? What does that really mean? What is progress? Is it progress that a black guy gets to push a button for the nuclear bomb? Is that progress? Maybe, I don't know.