There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.

I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible.

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.

We are powerful because we have survived

Who I am is what fulfills me and fulfills the vision I have of the world.

We must constantly encourage ourselves and each other to attempt the heretical actions that our dreams imply and so many of our old ideas disparage.

Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.