What are you studying?
Contemporary African literature. I’m at the University of Nevada, Reno.
What’s Reno like?
Well, it’s a casino town. The cultural part is a little … lacking.
And your students?
A lot of them have never been out of the state. When I moved from Taiwan to the U.S., I thought I was going to see the world, but Nevada really isn’t “the world.” My students write things on teacher evaluations like, “She has an accent.” I think if I lived in New York, I wouldn’t have a problem: Everyone here speaks with an accent.
Interview by Alexis Swerdloff