Raising Black children — female and male — in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive. And in order to survive they must let go. This is what mothers teach — love, survival — that is, self-definition and letting go.

Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.

Without community, there is no liberation.

Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged... We have been taught to either ignore our differences or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community, there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression... Survival is learning to take our difference and make them strengths.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

The love expressed between women is particular and powerful because we have had to love in order to live; love has been our survival.