Interviews

You have to advocate for your work and make sure that you aren’t waiting on some fairy godmother that isn’t coming.

Identity is a pastiche. My identity is made up of my family identities, in addition to other things that I’m always struggling to find.

Each day returning to this book teaches me something else. It teaches me about the height of my optimism.

To be human means to be forever shifting with the emotions of the day, of the hour. We are never just one thing.

I’m interested in complexity. I’m interested in the fact that very few things are simple.

I like to think of the short novel as the thin elephant; as an artistic form, it interests me because, by definition, it exists in a state of tension. 

We want you to learn from this book, be curious, and leave with a desire to learn more and an idea of where to go to find what you want to know.

In the spirit of leaning into the strengths you have as a writer, I try to make setting another character when I write and try to make the picture as vivid for readers as I can.

I love to listen repetitively, and I love to appreciate and to praise the people who I respect and admire, so I thought, “This is what I can do. I can just love and love again through this book.”

“When we love people, we stand to lose so much, don’t we? It’s one of the best things to write about.”

The diaspora is not just a longing for home but is also really complicated and beautiful and painful, this mysterious experience abroad.