The Goat
Reprinted in KGB LitMag · July 10, 2020
on Contrapposto by Dave Eggers
At the beginning of the 21st century, one book mapped, with uncanny accuracy, where American literature was headed.
Fiction · Essays · Criticism
Writing
Fiction, essays, and criticism exploring the ways we imagine, remember, and make meaning.
The debut novel · Simon & Schuster · 2019
A Particular Kind
of Black Man
A Nigerian-American family in small-town Utah. A son searching for belonging. A novel about memory, migration, and the stories through which we make ourselves.
“Wild, vulnerable, lived…”
The New York Times Book Review
Essays & criticism
Selected writing for The Atlantic, The Georgia Review, The New York Times, The Drift, and elsewhere.
39 entries
on On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, directed by Rungano Nyoni
One of the most arresting images in On Becoming a Guinea Fowl … arrives in the opening seconds.
on A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Whenever I read a novel about immigration, I recall a scene from the 2006 Italian film Nuovomondo (released as Golden Door in English).
on Elizabeth Catlett and Chakaia Booker
It is a strange thing to visit a museum these days—especially in Washington, D.C. I have restlessly visited galleries in this town for almost twenty years; in fact, I moved here largely because of the city’s large network of free cultural institutions.
on The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey
Almost two decades ago, while I was trying to find my footing as a writer—roving between the provinces of prose and poetry—I picked up “The Poetry Home Repair Manual” by Ted Kooser, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who served as poet laureate of the United States from 2004 to 2006.
on Necessary Fiction by Eloghosa Osunde
In the summer of 2018, I found myself enraptured by the television show Pose, a first-of-its-kind drama that featured a cast of Black and brown transgender performers.
God-Like Confidence | Donald Trump’s Cult of Faith
“Trump is unique among modern American presidents for his seeming lack of deep religious orientation,” the CNN correspondent MJ Lee wrote in 2017.
on My Lesbian Novel by Renee Gladman
For the past few years, I have been engaged in an intense argument with myself. This argument reached a climax last May, a few moments after I saw the film I Saw the TV Glow at the E Street Cinema in downtown Washington, D.C.
on Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us by Legacy Russell
Last November I tuned in to the latest episode of the newsmagazine 60 Minutes with great interest. I’ve been watching since I was a child—back then it was our weekly family tradition…
on Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America by Kevin Roberts
It is not often that a volume of policy recommendations makes national news. Yet this is what happened during the 2024 election cycle in the United States, when the innocuously named Project 2025…
The City Was All I Had
What I remember is the train rushing suddenly out of the darkness into another kind of darkness — a lighter darkness, perhaps, studded with pinpricks of yellow and red from shimmering buildings and passing cars, but darkness all the same.
on Sister Deborah by Scholastique Mukasonga
My immigrant parents—my father especially—are ardent Christians. As such, my childhood seemed to differ dramatically from the glimpses of American life I witnessed at school or on television.
on Entitlement by Rumaan Alam
In July of this year, a U.S.-based company called CrowdStrike released an update for its widely used cybersecurity software, inadvertently triggering a massive system crash.
on This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud
To tell a story is to place a frame around wayward events. The storyteller points to scenes unfolding within the frame and says, This is important. The implication is that what transpires beyond those borders is less consequential, or not so at all.
on Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham
In the wake of Bill Clinton’s presidential victory in 1992, a new genre of media—spanning literature, cinema, and television—emerged that sought to capture the energy of his campaign, the hope his election engendered, and the inevitable clash between the poetry of campaigning and the prose of governance.
on The Black Box: Writing the Race by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
By way of explaining the metaphor that serves as the title of his latest book, “The Black Box,” the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. transcribes a conversation he had with his son-in-law after the birth of his granddaughter 10 years ago:
on Change by Édouard Louis
In 2015, the Nobel Prize–winning novelist J. M. Coetzee published a book called The Good Story that he co-authored with a clinical psychologist named Arabella Kurtz. The book is essentially a conversation between Coetzee and Kurtz about the origins and social function of storytelling.
on Blackouts by Justin Torres
Justin Torres’s debut novel, We the Animals, quickly became a cultural phenomenon when it was published in 2011, the kind of novel that appeared on social-media feeds and celebrity reading lists.
on The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts by Gregg Hecimovich
Probably the most significant moment in my literary life — indeed, one of the most significant moments in my life — is the time my first-grade teacher introduced me to the poet Phillis Wheatley.
on Tremor by Teju Cole
In May, after months of negotiations, the Writers Guild of America announced a strike against the major Hollywood studios. Among the issues that the writers are concerned with is how artificial intelligence….
on Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
For the past three years, I have taught creative-writing courses at Georgetown University, and in that time, I have come to accept something I initially found strange:
on Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez
In 1976, the Argentine armed forces staged a coup against the president of Argentina, Isabel Perón. In short order, the military installed a junta that suspended political parties and various government functions, aggressively pursued free-market policies…
on The Furrows by Namwali Serpell
Perhaps the most painful moment following the death of a loved one is the split second after you reflexively pick up your phone to give them a call, or the instant after you tuck away an anecdote to share the next time you see them.
An Opportunity to Act
Two new literary genres emerged during the opening weeks of the pandemic. The first, the pandemic journal, proliferated almost as quickly as the virus that kept millions of us locked inside;
on To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
Contemporary novelists have adopted an intriguing strategy to counteract the waning cultural interest in literary fiction: They depict what a camera can’t—or won’t.
The Quake
Ten years ago I was sitting on my couch and thumbing through a novel when I felt it shift beneath me. For a moment I thought I’d somehow moved the couch even though I’d been lying perfectly still.
Is There Really Freedom in the Outdoors
About three months into the pandemic, I found myself standing at the window of my condo near downtown Washington, D.C., cradling my newborn. Outside, the sun was rising.
Masters of Reality
One of the immediate casualties of Trump’s rise to power, or so we were constantly told, was the truth. Scores of pundits appeared on television and discussed Trump’s habit of obscuring or ignoring the truth altogether.
Can a Black Novelist Write Autofiction?
Quick: What names come to mind when you hear the term “autofiction”? Let me guess, you’re probably thinking about Rachel Cusk, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Ben Lerner, and Sheila Heti, among a few others.
If We Want a Vital, Creative Society, We Need Universal Dental Care, Too
At night, my gums swelled, always soon after dinner. I knew something was wrong with my teeth, but at the age of 27, I didn’t have dental insurance.
on This Town Sleeps by Dennis E. Staples, Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey, and The God Child by Nana Oforiatta Ayim
At one point in Staples’s “This Town Sleeps,” the 20-something narrator, Marion Lafournier, recalls: “When I was in middle school Ojibwe class, I first learned the concept of having an Indian name. Or spirit name.
Tope Folarin on the Misguided Urge to Carve the World Into Binaries
When I was about six years old my father told me a fantastic, utterly incredible story. He said that when he was about six, maybe a bit older, he ventured into a small stand of woods…
on Devil on the Cross by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
A matatu, or taxi van, is traveling from the big city to a much smaller one. There are six people inside. They have known each other for just a few hours, but now they are something like family.
Nigerian-American Author Tope Folarin Reflects on Donald Trump's Election Victory
Donald Trump’s election victory has prompted many Americans to reflect on what his presidency will mean for them.
The First National Museum of African American History
The first National Museum of African American History has opened in Washington, more than 100 years after it was first proposed. Writer Tope Folarin visits the museum and reflects on its impact.
on Robert Irwin, Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Imbolo Mbue
I didn’t know much about Robert Irwin’s work when I wandered into the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden a few weeks ago.
Genesis
Each of the 5 shortlisted authors for Caine Prize for African Writing share their stories and perspectives from America via Nigeria, Somalia & Kenya, Zimbabwe & South Africa.
Oscar Diversity and Fiction in Times of Crisis
On the eve of the Oscars, the Caine Prize-winning writer Tope Folarin reflects on the debate the #OscarsSoWhite movement has sparked, and how it applies to writers too.
To Be Where We Are
What does it mean if I say to you that creation is working on itself inside me? Well, it means that I am made up of the stuff of the universe, like everyone else.
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Short stories
Genesis
Shortlisted, 2016 Caine Prize for African Writing
Miracle
Winner, 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing