Genre is a useful thing when organizing texts in a bookshop but immaterial to the particular exchange between writer and reader.

History is a story like any other, but black history is a story so devoid of logic that it frustrates the young reader. The young readers in my house, told of slavery and segregation, asked in disbelief, 'What? Why?' We - the parents of black children, the parents of all children - still need to tell that story.

It comforts the adult conscience to remember that, amid history's grave injustices, there were still great lives.

Rumaan Alam Quotes