Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.

Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.

I am very, very happy for Alice Walker.

There is a timbre of voice that comes from not being heard and knowing / you are not being heard / noticed only by others / not heard for the same reason.

In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men.

We are powerful because we have survived

So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.