The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
As for most writers, language is vital for me: a writer's ability to render a fictional world - characters, landscape, emotions - into something original that alters or deepens my understanding of both literature and life. — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
You see, at the beginning we weren't fighters. We weren't yellers or throwers, even if we eventually came to be. It would take time… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
I told my parents I was going to be a doctor and then a lawyer, but I never believed it and never tried. — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
“You will never disappear," I said. "Even if it may feel like you have at some point. We're going to remain a part of… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
The fact that I have always been deeply invested in politics, and African politics in particular, inevitably played a role in my first novel… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
Writers, especially those of us with roots in other countries, are rarely left to ourselves. We are asked to declare our allegiances, or they… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
Personally, its a comfort and happiness to know that my work is taken seriously and is not marginalised and put in a box of… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
“If the last thing a man has to hold on to is his sense of pride and accompanying dignity, then more likely than not… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
“Have you seen a hungry man with a gun? Of course not. Such things don't exist. It's like saying, have you ever seen a… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
There are those who wake up each morning to conquer the day, and then there are those of us who wake up only because… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
“She always thought Americans were too territorial. 'All those fences and flags,' she had once said, seeing very little difference between the two.” — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
Ethnic divisions can definitely be exacerbated by a lack of natural resources, but those tensions become violent when people manipulate them for their own… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
“I remember another aphorism of my father's, one that he used to say whenever we passed someone pissing openly in the street: add color… — Dinaw Mengestu Copy Share Image
