The book I am currently reading
I read a few books at once, and am working on strengthening my reading in Italian: Scholastique Mukasonga’s Igifu, translated by Jordan Stump. Paul Mendez’s Rainbow Milk and Helena Janeczek’s La ragazza con la Leica.
The book that changed my life
Ama Ata Aidoo’s Our Sister Killjoy blew open my conceptions of what a book could do and what subjects it could address. I felt seen and acknowledged as an immigrant, an African, a young woman navigating white culture. It had a profound and lasting effect on me: I was not alone.
The book I wish I’d written
This feels blasphemous but, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.
The book that had the greatest influenced on my writing
Homer’s Iliad swept me away when I first read it in high school. I’ve read it in various translations since; each time, I am riveted as if I don’t know what will happen.
The book I think is most underrated
Every book written by Daša Drndić should be better known, but especially her masterpiece Trieste.
The book that changed my mind
Jon Lee Anderson’s Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life showed me the many complicated and complex realities of revolutions and uprisings. The Che that Anderson introduces us to in this book is far from the flattened, photogenic image we see now.
The last book that made me cry
Han Kang’s Human Acts, translated by Deborah Smith, gutted me. The language finds ways to dig in and hold you even as you want to turn from the horror depicted.
The last book that made me laugh
A Igoni Barrett’s Blackass.
The book I couldn’t finish
Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle series. I kept trying then I asked, Why? He really doesn’t need me as a reader, I can move on.
The book I’m ashamed not to have read
Moby-Dick. Each year, I keep saying I will. Each year something prevents it. It’s now my 2021 goal.
The book I give as a gift
Laila Lalami’s The Moor’s Account, Mona Eltahawy’s The Seven Necessary Sins of Women and Girls, and Chike Frankie Edozien’s Lives of Great Men. These authors challenge and inspire me.
The book I’d most like to be remembered for
I’ve written two, so I suspect it’s not too difficult to be remembered for them both.
My earliest reading memory
Jack and Jill, which was also my earliest introduction to violence in literature when poor Jack broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after. Horrifying reading for a child.
My comfort read
I read poetry when I need to recharge and get inspired again. Right now I’m reading Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s Lighting the Shadow, Nicole Sealey’s Ordinary Beast and John Murillo’s Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry. Zbigniew Herbert, Ilya Kaminsky and June Jordan are in constant rotation.
• The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste has been nominated for the Booker prize.
