Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.

I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.

And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.

To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.

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

I started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that was not there

I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.