So many of the voices in fiction that are out there are deeply neurotic white male stories of how, ‘Oh, I had weird sex, I can’t figure things out, I’m going to ramble for 300 pages, you better sit still because I’m a tour de force,’ ” Ms. Maduka said. “I kind of felt like, I really don’t want to sit still for this.
Literature, from women of any race and men of any race, besides white, would always be pigeonholed as, ‘Now I’m going to tell you my Nigerian story,’ ” she added, “And it was so tiring.”
—Uzoamaka Maduka on why she started the new literary journal The American Reader.
