Namwali Serpell

"I think there was an impulse in me to write women as central to the text. Part of that is my own limitations as a writer: being able to delineate the varieties of female experience is clearly easier f…"

"…partly because I’m perceived as black…the idea I could look at my mother and say to her that I’m not black makes no sense. To me, blackness is just part of what the family is."

"I probably seem quite at ease now saying I’m mixed race, I’m black, I’m Zambian, but for a while that was quite torturous, quite angsty. As a young woman I wasn’t very tender or nice to myself…Now I’m…"

"…It's a very interesting position to be in as an immigrant to the United States - now a citizen - who grew up in a country where the word immigrant meant people who were coming into Zambia, not people…"