I Divide My Time Between Columbia, Maryland,

There Are Many Different Ways To Be Poor In The World But Increasingly There Seems To Be One Single Way To Be Rich.

Because Of Writers Like Chinua Achebe And Camara Laye … I Realized That People Like Me, Girls With Skin The Color Of Chocolate, Whose Kinky Hair Could Not Form Ponytails, Could Also Exist In Literature.

People Have Crushes On Priests All The Time, You Know. It’s Exciting To Have To Deal With God As A Rival.

The Best Novels Are Those That Are Important Without Being Like Medicine; They Have Something To Say, Are Expansive And Intelligent But Never Forget To Be Entertaining And To Have Character And Emotion At Their Centre.

I Would Come, Many Years Later, To Understand Why To Kill A Mockingbird Is Considered An Important Novel, But When I First Read It At 11, I Was Simply Absorbed By The Way It Evoked The Mysteries Of Childhood, Of Treasures Discovered In Trees, And Games Played With An Exotic Summer Friend.