I’m Very Feminist In The Way I

It Is Easy To Romanticize Poverty, To See Poor People As Inherently Lacking Agency And Will. It Is Easy To Strip Them Of Human Dignity, To Reduce Them To Objects Of Pity. This Has Never Been Clearer Than In The View Of Africa From The American Media, In Which We Are Shown Poverty And Conflicts Without Any Context.

I Can Write With Authority Only About What I Know Well, Which Means That I End Up Using Surface Details Of My Own Life In My Fiction.

I Had People Read It Early On And, You Know, Well-meaning People Said To Me, You Should Take Out The Blogs. I Didn't Get Much Positive Feedback. Only Because Most Of These People Were Protective Of Me - It Was Sort Of Like A "tone It Down, Make It Easier To Swallow" Kind Of Thing. And I Just Thought If I Do That Then It's Not The Book I Want To Write.

My Characters Are Usually Composites. I Wish I Could Pretend That I Make Up All Of These Characters, But No. I Steal From People. But People Will Say To Me, "oh, That's Me!" And I'm Thinking, No, That's Not You!

Race Doesn't Really Exist For You Because It Has Never Been A Barrier. Black Folks Don't Have That Choice.