Air Quote by Dinaw Mengestu

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

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

“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

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

“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