My fear of anger taught me nothing.

I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.

I am a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers

Anger is loaded with information and energy.

It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those other identified as outside the structures, in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make the strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.