Notes from an evening with Chris Abani
- On pride:
“Every writer thinks he feels things the most, that he is somehow special because he gets to narrate the world to everyone else as though they aren’t living it. Pride is one of the deadly sins, one writers commit every time we put pen to paper.”
- On language:
Language in America (English?) is transactional. Language in Igboland and elsewhere is philisophical—you ask for the salt and you get a proverb about not oversalting your life.
- On Exile:
Everyone loves an exile and the difficulty of “performing the nobility of exile.”
- On youth culture:
Young people have: squashed the notion of single authorship, given up the body for consciousness and experience a hive mind.
- On Hello Kitty:
Even Hello Kitty is a religion.
