Please give me an honest description of your own hair and what it says about you? Your novel includes detailed descriptions of black women having their hair done. I experience the world differently because I am female and because I am dark-skinned. People dismiss race and say, "We are all the same" – this is not true. It is worse in the US because of its racial history. I wish that Kimberley – who is a character I love and not a racist – didn't think all black people beautiful. People struggle to be honest and ordinary. There is a deep discomfort about the subject. How widespread is this condescension? One of your characters – Kimberley – describes all black people as "beautiful". You write with satirical precision about the way black people are patronised in the US and the UK – often in a well-meaning way. Have you experienced love at first sight? I am very interested in relationships and, when I watch couples, sometimes I can sense a blindness has set in. Lasting love has to be built on mutual regard and respect. I wish I knew… if I did, I would market it. I like the US and feel gratitude towards it. And regular electricity, not having to think about generators. I am given to unnecessary nostalgia, the longing for what isn't there.ĭo you miss the US when you are in Nigeria?
There is a wonderful quotation from Peter Ackroyd about the relationship between longing and belonging. I didn't think about identity at all until I went to the US. I left home, at 19, to study in Philadelphia. I look at it through Nigerian eyes.īelonging matters.
I consider myself a Nigerian who is comfortable in the world. I live half the year in Nigeria, the other half in the US. We'll come back to the subject of hair, but can you say where home is for you?
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