What the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe calls "a balance of stories."
What if my roommate knew about my Nigerian publisher, Muhtar Bakare, a remarkable man who left his job in a bank to follow his dream and start a publishing house? Now, the conventional wisdom was that Nigerians don't read literature.
He disagreed. He felt that people who could read, would read, if you made literature affordable and available to them.
Shortly after he published my first novel, I went to a TV station in Lagos to do an interview, and a woman who worked there as a messenger came up to me and said, "I really liked your novel.
I didn't like the ending. Now, you must write a sequel, and this is what will happen ..."
And she went on to tell me what to write in the sequel.
I was not only charmed, I was very moved.
Here was a woman, part of the ordinary masses of Nigerians, who were not supposed to be readers.
She had not only read the book, but she had taken ownership of it and felt justified in telling me what to write in the sequel.
Now, what if my roommate knew about my friend Funmi Iyanda, a fearless woman who hosts a TV show in Lagos, and is determined to tell the stories that we prefer to forget?