My Mom Taught Me To Read When

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.'

I Think That Those Of Us Who Are Ordinary Disappear Easily Into The Backdrop Of Life And We Take Things For Granted. We Often Wake Up In Our Lives And Wonder How We Got There. But The Characters I Create, The People I Am Drawn To, Are Quite Extraordinary (and Not Always In Wholesome Ways), And They Offer Us The Chance To Understand Who We Really Are And How We Became Who We Are.

Fire And Water Are Archetypes, The Split Sides Of Consciousness; One Aware, The Other, Not. The Two Parts Of Us That Desire Synthesis, Yet Resist It: The Self And The Shadow. But They Are Also The Element Of Chance, Of The Random Roll Of Dice.

What I Do Is Create A Lens Through My Work That Corrects My Readers' Cognitive Dissonance And Says: You Will See All Of It - Not What You Want Or What Makes You Comfortable, But All Of It. And You Will Not Erase What Displeases You.

All Power Within The Microcosm Of My World Was Held And Wielded By People Who Look Like Me. Plus, I Think Nigerians All Have This Sense That They Are Better Than Everyone, Including White People. So I Have The Privilege Of A Certain Distance. It May Just Be That. So In A Sense, I Can't Claim That As Any Ability That I Have, Simply A Matter Of Circumstance.