I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.

Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.

Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away.

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.

The strongest lesson I can teach my son is the same lesson I teach my daughter: how to be who he wishes to be for himself.

Silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness.

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.