So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely feel the emotion of the text. It's only after - long after - I've finished a piece that I can experience in any way its emotional charge.

I wrote fiction during my entire childhood, from age 4 to 18, and started writing plays when I went to Yale and Oxford.

I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones.

Sight is subjective. We learned that in class.

As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.

As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.