What he knows is this: there is no past, there is no "what happened", there is only the moment that unfolds into the next, dragging everything with i… - Maaza Mengiste

It seems that every new writer with any remote connection to the continent of Africa, either willingly or unwillingly, has first to wrestle with this question of identity before talking about what should matter most: their book...we should focus on the ability of the story to immerse us so fully in the world that has been constructed, that it feels a bit like home.

These aren't the days to pretend you're only a wife or a sister or a mother, she says. We're more than this.

Who remembers what to do? she asks. Who remembers what it means to be more than what this world believes of us?