What I Do Is Create A Lens

If I Dont Get At Least One E-mail Every Ten Minutes, I Feel Unloved. Even Junk Mail Makes Me Feel Seen. Sad, I Know. Sigh.

The Internet Is Really Our Meeting Place. We Have This Amazing Listserv. Every Time I Log Onto It I Feel A Sense Of Pride, Because If You Log On And Say, "oh I Was Just In San Diego And I Was In A Park And I Saw A Lion," The Flurry Of Replies On Average Is Just Like--wow! All These Existential Questions About What It Means To Be An African, And Never Having Seen A Lion At Home, But Having Seen A Lion Here. Everything You Say Turns Into This Real Philosophical Debate--it's Incredible In So Many Ways. And It's An Invigorating Place To Be.

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.

In This Time Of The Internet And Nonfiction, To Be On An Actual Bookshelf In An Actual Bookstore Is Exciting In Itself.

I Didn't Leave Africa, I Left Nigeria, And For Political Reasons. But ... I've Never, Never Left Africa, And I Certainly Never Left What It Means To Be Ibo. That Is Something You Carry With You.