The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips.

I read recently that the problem with stereotypes isn't that they are inaccurate, but that they're incomplete. And this captures perfectly what I think about contemporary African literature. The problem isn't that it's inaccurate, it's that it's incomplete.

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

I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

I live in Rome and five minutes from my flat is a church where you can walk in and see this beautiful Caravaggio. Just the way this man uses dark paint: dark to create dark to create dark, the layering of the darkness in his work. I just race home: I want to create!

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

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