I didn't have the luxury of thinking, I’m going to write about this five years from now, after I’ve processed it. This book felt like it required immediacy.
If the characters who become part of the black canon are the creations of white people, Afro-futurism becomes an appropriation of white-extended thought.
[A writer] does not have to be a mirror for his time. This is very silly, I think. Always, you have to step back a little. I, personally, take distance.
It’s adaptive to become a sort of supreme noticer, and I believe there is a certain power—a feminine power—in that: to see and make sense of what you see.
What happened to the dream of the city as the place where you meet everyone you never imagined? Of queerness as ending borders rather than creating them.
My approach to writing was like a little volatile. Sort of like “fuck you," what drove a lot of my creativity—not all the time, but I can identify that.
The apocalyptic has been part of the human imagination since Day One. My books are channeling those potential realities, registering those seismic ripples.
It wasn’t until later on in college that I wanted to be a writer. I was never around other writers so I didn’t know that’s what a human like me could be.
When I write fiction, I feel like I’m slowly sneaking up on myself in a cafeteria, and there I am (a poet) quietly eating a terrible, complicated sandwich.