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I studied African American studies, and I read these slave narratives and the escape narratives of people that were able to escape slavery and always found those stories intriguing and powerful and inspiring.

I can literally count on one hand how many slave stories have gotten notoriety over the past few years.

White writers in many cases choose not to populate their fiction with people of color. A lot of what I'm doing is trying to write against that, not about race but against the avoidance of race that's such a dominant model in white literary discourse.

The inherited tradition is that we don't tell stories about slavery from the perspective of the slave. It's told through the president or the lawyer.

Many slaves on this continent are oppressed, and their cries have reached the ears of the Most High. Such are the purity and certainty of his judgments, that he cannot be partial in our favor.

We have far more options for black Americans to tell stories outside of slavery, but whenever it comes to slavery, it's an uncomfortable subject. Why? Because it's the most unresolved subject in American history.

There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power.

If you write nonfiction, a historical account of what really happened, first of all, it's always white men who do that, and you don't have the voices that are really interesting to me, of the people who are not sheltered by the big umbrella of the establishment.

My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.

I don't believe there's two sides to every story. It's black and white. There's right and wrong.