To the extent that we live in a postmodern world and it shapes the concrete circumstances of our daily lives, I would say postmodernism affects my work or influences my work.

But love is really more of an interactive process. It's about what we do not just what we feel. It's a verb, not a noun.

Yearning is the word that best describes a common psychological state shared by many of us, cutting across boundaries of race, class, gender, and sexual practice.

The fact is that it was bourgeois white feminism that I was reacting against when I stood in my first women's studies classes and said, "Black women have always worked."

The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

Part of why I have started writing about love is feeling that our culture is forgetting what Martin Luther King taught. We name more and more streets and schools after him but that's almost irrelevant, because what is to be remembered is that strength to love.

The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming low self-esteem.