Greatness Depends On Where You Are Coming

If I Had Not Grown Up In Nigeria- And If All I Knew Of Africa Were Of Popular Images- I Too Would Think That Africa Was A Place Of Beautiful Landscapes, Beautiful Animals And Incomprehensible People Fighting Sensless Wars, Dying Of Poverty And Aids- Unable To Speak For Themselves And Waiting To Be Saved By A Kind White Foreigner.

We Did That Often, Asking Each Other Questions Whose Answers We Already Knew. Perhaps It Was So That We Would Not Ask The Other Questions, The Ones Whose Answers We Did Not Want To Know.

The Problem With Gender Is That It Prescribes How We Should Be Rather Than Recognizing How We Are. Imagine How Much Happier We Would Be, How Much Freer To Be Our True Individual Selves, If We Didn't Have The Weight Of Gender Expectations.

When The Writing Is Going Well, I'm Obsessive. I Don't Shower, I Don't Take Phone Calls, I Hardly Respond To Text Messages, I Don't Do Email. I Take Breaks Only To Read, And Usually I Read Poetry. When It's Not Going Well, I Just Lie In Bed And Eat Chocolate.

I Think My First General Rule Is That Most Of My Experiences Are Not That Interesting. It's Usually Other People's Experiences. It's Not That Entirely Conscious. Somebody Tells Me A Story Or, You Know, Repeats An Anecdote That Somebody Else Told Them And I Just Feel Like I Have To Write It Down So I Don't Forget - That Means For Me, Something Made It Fiction-worthy. Interesting Things Never Happen To Me, So Maybe Two Or Three Times When They Do, I Have To Use Them, So I Write Them Down.