I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself, actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something, no maybe junior and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

I almost never do anything for Black History Month, because I feel it's just another way to separate us.

I have fought and kicked and fasted and prayed and cursed and cried myself to the point of existing.

Abortion is an act of self-defense.

The hardest part is when you're in danger yourself. You have to face what could happen and might be likely to happen to you. It's not just that you're there standing next to somebody that something bad is likely to happen to. That is a true moment of reckoning with who you really are.

If a person is hit hard enough, even if she stands, she falls.