Men Do Communicate, Often Very Directly, But

My Mom Taught Me To Read When I Was Two Or Three. When I Was Five I Read And Wrote Well Enough To Do My Nine-year Older Brother's Homework In Exchange For Chocolate Or Cigarettes. By The Time I Was 10, I Was Reading Orwell, Tolstoy's War And Peace, And The Koran. I Was Reading Comic Books Too.

The Internet Is Really Our Meeting Place. We Have This Amazing Listserv. Every Time I Log Onto It I Feel A Sense Of Pride, Because If You Log On And Say, "oh I Was Just In San Diego And I Was In A Park And I Saw A Lion," The Flurry Of Replies On Average Is Just Like--wow! All These Existential Questions About What It Means To Be An African, And Never Having Seen A Lion At Home, But Having Seen A Lion Here. Everything You Say Turns Into This Real Philosophical Debate--it's Incredible In So Many Ways. And It's An Invigorating Place To Be.

The Truth Is, Everything We Know About America, Everything Americans Come To Know About Being American, Isn't From The News. I Live There. We Don't Go Home At The End Of The Day And Think, "well, I Really Know Who I Am Now Because The Wall Street Journal Says That The Stock Exchange Closed At This Many Points." What We Know About How To Be Who We Are Comes From Stories. It Comes From The Novels, The Movies, The Fashion Magazines. It Comes From Popular Culture.

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.

Every Successful Artist Comes From A Family - Parents Or Siblings Or Both - Who, Although Equally Gifted, Chose Not To Pursue The Treacherous And Difficult Path Of The Artist.