When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.

If what we need to dream, to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise, is discounted as a luxury, then we give up the core -- the fountain -- of our power, our womanness; we give up the future of our worlds. (From "Poetry is Not a Luxury")

I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.

In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.

What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are-until the poem-nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.