Uzodinma Iweala

“There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority.”

“In general, Barack Hussein Obama brings us face to face with the discomfort our society feels with this idea of difference.”

“The first time I ever cast a vote in my 1992 Blessed Sacrament School poll, I voted for Ross Perot because - Ross Perot.”

“No one can really relate to somebody who has given up entirely.”

“There are books that are made for you to sit and puzzle over and spend time with.”

“Right after undergrad, I started doing low-level work on health issues in sub-Saharan Africa, and what struck me was the disconnect between how people in New York would speak about some of the issues people were facing. At the time, 2006-ish, there were a number of big media campaigns to raise awareness about HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.”

“I don't know if I want to be a writer.”

“I find the sort of unwitting European American outsider who wants to come to Africa to help is a very problematic construction. It's problematic because you don't want to tell people don't aid, don't help, when people feel a need to.”

“I'm not a propaganda machine. I tell things how I see them. When I say, for example, that corruption is not the only thing the West should think about when they think about Nigeria, I'm not saying it doesn't exist but that people have the complete wrong focus. There's music, there's art, there's culture.”

“We are not living in the same world we were immediately after the Cold War, when there seemed to be a greater belief in the universality of human rights and there was enough prosperity to make us question why we had not committed more resources to upholding the values we claimed to hold most dear.”

“America is decidedly not 'post-racial.'”

“As Americans, I think we're a very entitled bunch.”

“D.C. is in my blood, my diction, my sensibility and style. I am, though, in love with a city that cannot fully love me back.”

“Around the world, our cities are not the idealised open, accessible, and cosmopolitan spaces of our dreams. More often than not, they are sectioned and controlled purviews of the radically wealthy, surrounded by clusters of have-nots.”

“I hear a good song and I start thinking, 'Oh shoot. You know there's a story that can be told to this,' and whatnot.”

“Lagos is sometimes emblematic of disorder. In traffic, drivers make their own rules. There is a constant war between our street hawkers and our various forms of law enforcement deployed to eradicate the 'indiscipline' of poverty.”

“Memoir is a difficult literary form to pull off when dealing with discrete and poignant moments in a life, even harder when seeking to narrate over 80 years of existence.”

“Nigeria is a difficult place. It is not a country for the faint of heart. On a good day, when our larger cities such as Abuja, Lagos, and Kano are filled with the teeming masses going in so many different directions, flogged by the heat and sun, bumping down uneven roads all in the name of 'the hustle,' it can appear chaotic.”

“The images that we see of Africa are so... that are so engrained in our minds are of this place that is terrible - like hell on earth. And that doesn't acknowledge the positive things - the many, many, many positive things - that people are doing.”

“Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.”