The Only Reason Race Matters Is Because

If You Followed The Media You'd Think That Everybody In Africa Was Starving To Death, And That's Not The Case; So It's Important To Engage With The Other Africa.

In Primary School In South-eastern Nigeria, I Was Taught That Hosni Mubarak Was The President Of Egypt. I Learned The Same Thing In Secondary School. In University, Mubarak Was Still President Of Egypt. I Came To Assume, Subconsciously, That He - And Others Like Paul Biya In Cameroon And Muammar Gaddafi In Libya - Would Never Leave.

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

Because Of Writers Like Chinua Achebe And Camara Laye … I Realized That People Like Me, Girls With Skin The Color Of Chocolate, Whose Kinky Hair Could Not Form Ponytails, Could Also Exist In Literature.

At About The Age Of Seven … I Wrote Exactly The Kinds Of Stories I Was Reading: All My Characters Were White And Blue-eyed, They Played In The Snow, They Ate Apples, And They Talked A Lot About The Weather: How Lovely It Was That The Sun Had Come Out. This Despite The Fact That I Lived In Nigeria; We Didn’t Have Snow, We Ate Mangoes, And We Never Talked About The Weather, Because There Was No Need To.