If You Want To Know About Africa,

If You Encounter A Human Shadow Burned Permanently Into The Concrete In Hiroshima, You Realize That This Is The Trace Of A Very Ordinary Person Now Elevated Into The Emblematic. Time, Shame, Complicity, Or Discomfort Are The Only Things That Make Us Pretend History Is Impersonal Or Far Removed From The Power And Consequences Of Our Every Lived Moment.

Something That Had The Quality Of A Dimly Lit Stage Set Just Before The Curtains Rise On Opening Night. There Was A Rhythm To It, A Beckoning, And A Bittersweet Tear In Time.

That Women Are Mysterious And Unknowable Is Something Every Young Man Grows Up Believing. Men, On The Other Hand, Never Think Of Themselves As Mysterious Or Confusing, And We Are Often At A Loss As To Why Women Want To Figure Us Out.

All My Characters Exist In Risk, In The Places We Are Either Too Afraid To Go To, Or Have Enough Privilege Not To Have To, But Whatever The Reason, These Characters I Fashion Go Before Us And Come Back Transformed For Us. For Me, At Least.

I Didn't Leave Africa, I Left Nigeria, And For Political Reasons. But ... I've Never, Never Left Africa, And I Certainly Never Left What It Means To Be Ibo. That Is Something You Carry With You.