The Only Reason Race Matters Is Because

Then She Wished, More Rationally, That She Could Love Him Without Needing Him. Need Gave Him Power Without His Trying; Need Was The Choicelessness She Often Felt Around Him.

She Rested Her Head Against His And Felt, For The First Time, What She Would Often Feel With Him: A Self-affection. He Made Her Like Herself.

Americans Think African Writers Will Write About The Exotic, About Wildlife, Poverty, Maybe Aids. They Come To Africa And African Books With Certain Expectations.

She Wanted To Ask Him Why They Were All Strangers Who Shared The Same Last Name.

The Novels I Love, The Ones I Remember, The Ones I Re-read, Have An Empathetic Human Quality, Or 'emotional Truth'. This Quality Is Difficult To Fully Define, But I Always Recognise It When I See It: It Is Different From Honesty And More Resilient Than Fact, Something That Exists Not In The Kind Of Fiction That Explains But In The Kind That Shows.