As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live.

How much of this truth can I bear to see and still live unblinded? How much of this pain can I use?

I am my best work - a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines.

I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those boundaries.

The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation .

Poetry is not a luxury.