I Truly Believe That Writing Is A

Love Is At Once The Most Creative And Yet Simultaneously Destructive Force In The World, And Thus, In Our Lives. And I Don't Mean The Hallmark Sentimental Type Of Love, Although That Is Part Of It. But A Deeper Obligation That We Have To Each Other: The Obligation To Reflect Our Humanness At Each Other, To Reflect Back The Things Others Show Us And We, Them.

If You Want To Know About Africa, Read Our Literature - And Not Just 'things Fall Apart,' Because That Would Be Like Saying, 'i've Read 'gone With The Wind' And So I Know Everything About America.'

The Truth Is That History, With Its Imposing Capital H, Is Simply The Amalgamation Of Many Quotidian Lives Lived In Very Ordinary Ways. History Is Always Personal. If You Read Holocaust Survivor Or American Slavery Survivor Narratives, You Realize All Too Well That These Great Historical Moments Were Personal To Someone At Some Time.

Fiction Is More Dangerous Than Nonfiction Because It Can Seduce Better. I Think We All Know This, Know That Deeper Truths Can Be Approached In Fiction Than In Fact. There Are Risks For The Reader, Because After Reading Certain Books You Find You Have Changed Irreversibly. There Are Risks For Writers: In China, Now, And Ethiopia And Other Countries Right Now, Writers Face Real Persecution.

Much Of The Image Of The Amazingness Of America Comes From The Movies Into Other Cultures. And It's Much The Same Thing When You Reverse It. Much Of Africa Is Presented Through Poverty, Through Drought And War. [but] You're Not Presenting People, You're Not Presenting Countries, You're Not Presenting Complexity, And So People Can't Care About An Amorphous Mass Called Africa.