Dinaw Mengestu Quotes
born 1978 Ethiopia
Dinaw Mengestu (born 30 June 1978) is an Ethiopian American novelist and writer.
- Ethiopia
- Journalists
- Non-fiction authors
- Novelists
Random Dinaw Mengestu quote
13 quotes
There’s a certain restlessness that comes just from what you have
It’s important to acknowledge all parts of your heritage in the story.
Of course I’m a good liar—I’m a fiction writer. I could tell you anything.
The value of the culture itself is under threat once it’s away from home, in migration, and once it’s in the Western context where other values begin to sort of dominate
I still see more hope and potential in Africa than I do despair, and I say that after having seen it at its very worst
Recently much more attention has been paid to the growing class and economic divide within America, and that divide, when coupled with race, magnifies the tensions even more.
If there is one country’s sense of national identity and literature that should be broad enough and expansive enough to allow for a multitude inside of that, it should be America
It’s not that the book intends to be oblique in any way; it wants to be in dialogue with the reader
Without literature, we don’t actually have free expression
Fiction fills a role in our lives that I think nothing else can
Interview with Novelist Dinaw Mengestu
Even when I don’t intend it, there seems to be an undercurrent of absence, of longing, of particular kinds of melancholy that sit under the circumstances in all my books.
Behind every book ban, behind every threat to immigrants being able to speak out is a larger argument being made: that these stories shouldn’t be heard, that these experiences shouldn’t be talked about, they shouldn’t be written about, they shouldn’t be said