I never think of genre when I'm writing

On Nigerian folklore, and how writers with hyphenated identities are opening up the borders of the English language

- Simar Bhasin

Folklore is woven into your prose. Did that happen organically? I grew up in Nigeria for the first eight years of my life, soaking up oral storytelling: these fantastical, strange stories about different characters with multiple intentions in the story. Depending on who told you the story, the ending or the middle might change. So, they were kind of shape-shifting stories in a way, and I think I imbibed that as a child. These incredible stories about characters in Africa, folktales, fables, all that rich imaginative scope, was something that I was able to have access to really young. That is incorporated into the very matter of me, the very bones of my being.