This rule of silence is upheld when the culture refuses everyone easy access even to the word “patriarchy.” Most children do not learn what to call this system of institutionaliz ed gender roles, so rarely do we name it in everyday speech. This silence promotes denial. And how can we organize to challenge and change a system that cannot be named?

No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.

Wars make people rich - and they make a lot of people poor, and they take a lot of people's lives away from them.

Teaching Black Studies, I find that students are quick to label a black person who has grown up in a predominantly white setting and attended similar schools as "not black enough." ...Our concept of black experience has been too narrow and constricting.

If anything I think postmodernism has the least impact on my work.

Fame is fun, money is useful, celebrity can be exciting, but finally life is about optimal well-being and how we achieve that in dominator culture, in a greedy culture, in a culture that uses so much of the world’s resources. How do men and women, boys and girls, live lives of compassion, justice and love? And I think that’s the visionary challenge for feminism and all other progressive movements for social change.

The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.