I have been writing since I was old enough to spell. I have never considered not writing.

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. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt...

I have my father’s lopsided mouth. When I smile, my lips slope to one side. My doctor sister calls it my cerebral palsy mouth. I am very much a daddy’s girl, and even though I...

Papa said that the parish priest in Abba was not spiritual enough. That was the problem with our people, Papa told us, our priorities were wrong; we cared too much about huge church buildings and...

Alexa and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the...

Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.

Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.

Creative writing programmes are not very necessary. They just exist so that people like us can make a living.

They are always so quiet,” he said, turning to Papa. “So quiet.””They are not like those loud children people are raising these days, with no home training and no fear of God,” Papa said, and...

Alexa, and the other guests, and perhaps even Georgina, all understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the...

The Red Cross irritated Ugwu; the least they could do was ask Biafrans their preferred foods rather than sending so much bland flour.

Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice.

I live half the year in Nigeria, the other half in the U.S. But home is Nigeria – it always will be. I consider myself a Nigerian who is comfortable in the world. I look...

You could have just said Ngozi is your tribal name and Ifemelu is your jungle name and throw in one more as your spiritual name. They’ll believe all kinds of shit about Africa.

leading blogger” about race.

I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.

I think I’m ridiculously fortunate. I consider myself a Nigerian – that’s home; my sensibility is Nigerian. But I like America, and I like that I can spend time in America.

I find that women… deal with immigration differently. And I’m interested in that.

He spoke so effortlessly, as if his mouth were a musical instrument that just let sound out when touched, when opened.

If I were not African, I wonder whether it would be clear to me that Africa is a place where the people do not need limp gifts of fish but sturdy fishing rods and fair...

He often paused before he spoke. She thought this exquisite; it was as though he had such regard for his listener that he wanted his words strung together in the best possible way.

Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write...

Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaican or I’m Ghanaian. America doesn’t care.

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.

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...

It doesn’t have to be dreads. You can wear an Afro, or braids like you used to. There’s a lot you can do with natural hair

…I’m worried I will leave grad school and no longer be able to speak English. I know this woman in grad school, a friend of a friend, and just listening to her talk is scary....

I own things I like, but nothing inanimate that I treasure in a deeply consuming way.

I like the U.S. and feel gratitude towards it.

There are two answers to the things they will teach you about our land: the real answer and the answer you give in school to pass. You must read books and learn both answers.

I am a person who believes in asking questions, in not conforming for the sake of conforming. I am deeply dissatisfied – about so many things, about injustice, about the way the world works –...

Ifemelu would also come to learn that, for Kimberly, the poor were blameless. Poverty was a gleaming thing; she could not conceive of poor people being vicious or nasty because their poverty had canonized them,...

Men ras är inte biologi; ras är sociologi. Ras är inte genotyp; ras är fenotyp. Ras är betydelsefullt på grund av rasismen.

The educated ones leave, the ones with the potential to right the wrongs. They leave the weak behind. The tyrants continue to reign because the weak cannot resist. Do you not see that it is...

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...

She wanted to ask him why they were all strangers who shared the same last name.

You know it was love at first sight for both of us,” he said.”For both of us? Is it by force? Why are you speaking for me?””I’m just stating a fact. Stop struggling.”…”Yes, it’s a...

She seemed so happy, so at peace, and I wondered how anybody around me could feel that way when liquid fire was raging inside me, when fear was mingling with hope and clutching itself around...

Non-fiction, and in particular the literary memoir, the stylised recollection of personal experience, is often as much about character and story and emotion as fiction is.

I sort of consider myself a Nigerian who spends a lot of time in the U.S.

At some point I was a happy African feminist who does not hate men and who likes to wear lip gloss and high heels for herself and not for men.

It is easy to romanticize poverty, to see poor people as inherently lacking agency and will. It is easy to strip them of human dignity, to reduce them to objects of pity. This has never...

The best thing about America is that it gives you space. I like that. I like that you buy into the dream, it’s a lie but you buy into it and that’s all that matters.

racist.” Find something new. Like Racial Disorder Syndrome. And we could have different categories for sufferers of this syndrome: mild, medium, and acute.

If the sun refuses to rise we will make it rise

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...

Excuses don’t win a game. You should try strategy.

She felt as if she had somehow failed him and herself by allowing his mother’s behavior to upset her. She should be above it; she should shrug it off as the ranting of a village...

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...

I think it’s possible to have been a happy child, as I was, and still question and push back with regard to societal conventions.