My father describes Okigbo as a fast-speaking, fast-driving, fun-loving, and extremely intelligent young man. He apparently had a flair for languages… - Sarah Ladipo Manyika

You mention Abubakar’s wonderful novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms, and I can tell you that when it came out I joked with him that his fifty-five-year-old Bintu could hardly be considered an old woman, at least not in comparison to my Morayo, two decades older. However, I hadn’t yet met Willard Harris, a real-life character and now a dear friend whom I write about in my new book. Mrs. Harris was ninety-seven years old when I first met her, and at that time she had a “gentleman friend” who was at least a decade younger than her. You know what they say about life being stranger or more interesting than fiction.

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.

Had I known that my first novel would become required reading for all students applying to university in Nigeria, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage to write it. It has been an incredible honor for me to have a book read by so many people and especially exciting to know that the novel is, in some small way, inspiring a new generation of writers.