They stirred my imagination. They opened up new worlds for me.
But the unintended consequence was that I did not know that people like me could exist in literature.
So what the discovery of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a single story of what books are.
I come from a conventional, middle-class Nigerian family.
My father was a professor. My mother was an administrator.
And so we had, as was the norm, live-in domestic help, who would often come from nearby rural villages.
So, the year I turned eight, we got a new house boy. His name was Fide.
The only thing my mother told us about him was that his family was very poor.
My mother sent yams and rice, and our old clothes, to his family.
And when I didn't finish my dinner, my mother would say, "Finish your food! Don't you know?