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It did occur to me that certainly African-Americans are not underserved in picture books, but those books are almost all about specifically black experiences.

I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began.

Writing about Africa by Africans has been part of my literary apprenticeship, standing alongside works by authors such as Joseph Conrad, Joyce Cary and Graham Greene as influences.

African narratives in the West, they proliferate. I really don't care anymore. I'm more interested in the stories we tell about ourselves - how, as a writer, I find that African writers have always been the curators of our humanity on this continent.

The Negro, however, has been tested on an extensive scale.

What if I told you every single person in America - every single person on Earth - is African? With a small scrape of cells from the inside of anyone's cheek, the science of genetics can even prove it.

If you've ever left a bag of clothes outside the Salvation Army or given to a local church drive, chances are that you've dressed an African.

The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.

Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.

I don't think there's enough breadth to the stories told about African-Americans.