Humans are fond of putting people into categories for all sorts of reasons, but oftentimes, especially when it comes to skin color and nationality, f… - Sarah Ladipo Manyika

I’m so grateful to Adichie for having written Half of a Yellow Sun with its focus on the Nigerian civil war. Her novel, alongside other books with the war at its core, including Soyinka’s memoir The Man Died, Chris Abani’s novella-in-verse Daphne’s Lot, and Chinelo Okparanta’s novel Under the Udala Trees, all give us a greater sense of the events and conditions of that horrific war. While the civil war is not the central focus of In Dependence, it forms part of the tragic backdrop to the story. In Dependence is deeply personal for me in that I am writing about my parents’ generation. This is not my parents’ story, but it could have been their story.

Whenever I can’t find stories that I want to read, I try writing them for myself. In this case, I’d met many older women who’d lived colorful lives and yet when it came to fiction, I didn’t find stories that mirrored these lives, especially so when it came to the lives of Black women.

How I wish that Baldwin was still with us—he was so wise, and his work feels just as relevant today as it was during his lifetime. Baldwin’s presence is felt throughout this book in part because he meant so much to many of those featured, including Morrison. In Morrison’s eulogy for Baldwin, she refers to three gifts that he gave to her: tenderness, courage, and language. These are gifts that I feel he’s given to all of us, and of course Morrison has left us with similar gifts, too. A copy of Baldwin’s Collected Essays has sat close to my writing desk for more than two decades. It sits alongside Margaret Busby’s groundbreaking anthologies, Daughters of Africa and New Daughters of Africa—my literary taliswomen.