Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.

It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.

Learning not to crumple before these uncertainties fuels my resolve to print myself upon the texture of each day fully rather than forever.

I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.

For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, beautiful and tough as chestnut stanchions against our nightmare of weakness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling

Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.