You Deserve To Take Up Space.

Privilege Blinds, Because It's In Its Nature To Blind. Don't Let It Blind You Too Often. Sometimes You Will Need To Push It Aside In Order To See Clearly.

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.

I Am A Bit Of A Fundamentalist When It Comes To Black Women's Hair. Hair Is Hair - Yet Also About Larger Questions: Self-acceptance, Insecurity And What The World Tells You Is Beautiful. For Many Black Women, The Idea Of Wearing Their Hair Naturally Is Unbearable.

I Am Drawn, As A Reader, To Detail-drenched Stories About Human Lives Affected As Much By The Internal As By The External, The Kind Of Fiction That Jane Smiley Nicely Describes As 'first And Foremost About How Individuals Fit, Or Don't Fit, Into Their Social Worlds.'

I Often Make The Mistake Of Thinking That Something That Is Obvious To Me Is Obvious To Everyone Else.