"in many ways, Ethiopia is an oral culture., I spent a lot of time listening to stories and histories told around dinner tables or in the sitting room. The stories my grandfather would tell were often about the Italo-Ethiopian wars, both the first and the second, and also life lessons. Those stories of my grandfather's really informed how I viewed-history, how I viewed Ethiopia; what it meant to be Ethiopian. Those were my books, the stories that I learned. When I think back to the stories that I would hear, especially when my parents would tell stories, that cadence in which they told them, and the momentum they had while telling it, that's something I am always trying to emulate in my writing. So I count them as an influence as much as anything that I've read."
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Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesAfrican Americans
Original Language: English
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Sources
in The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books That Changed Their Lives by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager (2020)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Maaza_Mengiste
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Maaza Mengiste
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