Why I Go Over

People in the UK still ask me why I go over to the US so much. I could give a whole list of reasons, including my love for interacting with audiences, the importance I attribute to writers from Africa (of various stripes and from a range of countries) being seen and identified as active and valuable contributors to the world's culture without disappearing under institutional labels like 'African-American' etcetera etcetera. However, the bottom line is very basic; in spite of my residence in the UK and my home in Ghana, my biggest audience (measured by the number of people who visit my websites, blogs, follow my facebook and twitter updates) is in the US. I think it's a matter of respect for authors to make themselves available to their audiences, because without them every author would be a person alone in a room doing weird things with words. That's why I go to the US so much.

Notes From a Warm Place

So, the people who invited me to read in Southern & Northern California have been sending me very lovely comments from the audience members and, I have pulled them together into a 14-line collage in celebration. My trip so far as been incredibly reaffirming - if I ever doubted that readers just love literature and want to be challenged and exposed to new worlds, my doubts have been blown away... Here's the collage/bricolage/commentage:

The poem he read to us which paralleled playing
a piano with playing basketball). I thought it was both
thoughtful and creative. Not only was he an attractive writer,
but his poetry was amazing, the perfect

antidote to an otherwise grinding week. His reading draws me in
and paints pictures; the way that he speaks of togetherness,
in terms of "we" instead of "I" says a lot about his character.
He speaks with such rhythm. I loved Nii's reading;

definitely my favorite guest speaker. The way he read
his novel was almost as if he was singing a song.
I love the way he incorporated language in his book.
He has such a wonderful spirit; I thoroughly enjoyed hearing his work.

I'm just about to order his book from Amazon.
I wish he could come back and read to us again!