"I did not do it because I wanted to one day have a book deal…I did it because I loved it, and I enjoyed it, and I did not know where it was going to take me. I did it out of love of the art."
Imbolo Mbue is a Cameroonian American novelist and short story writer based in New York City. She is known for her debut novel Behold the Dreamers (2016), which garnered her the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Blue Metropolis Words to Change Award. Her works draw from her own experiences as an immigrant, as well as the experiences of other immigrants.
"Anyone can go to the shop and buy anything and give to anyone, he told Liomi when the boy asked him for the umpteenth time why he couldn’t get even a little toy truck. The true measure of whether somebody really loves you, he lectured, is what they do for you with their hands and say to you with their mouth and think of you in their heart."
"Home will never go away Home will be here when you come back You may go to bring back fortune You may go to escape misfortune You may even go, just because you want to go But when you come back We hope you’ll come back Home will still be here."
"…One of my favorite things was that television was all in English. Growing up an English speaker in a predominantly French-speaking country, I couldn’t understand most TV shows since they were in French, so coming to America allowed me to enjoy such a simple pleasure…"
"People in this country, always worrying about how to eat, they pay someone good money to tell them: Eat this, don’t eat that. If you don’t know how to eat, what else can you know how to do in this world?"
"Our people say no condition is permanent, Mr. Edwards. Good times must come to an end, just like bad times, whether we want it or not."
"…The reason why people connected with the characters is because they are real, and to write real characters you have to go deep into them. As a human you look at another human and you come with your own judgements, but as a writer you have to put that aside and just look at people for who they are. It is a process, and much of it is subconscious…"