The political writer, then, is the ultimate optimist, believing people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and penetrate the privatism of our lives.

To assess the damage is a dangerous act.

In 1984, I turned to theater in the hopes of finding a more direct form of communication between me and my people.

Oppression does not make for hearts as big as all outdoors. Oppression makes us big and small. Expressive and silenced. Deep and dead.

Remember you live in a community. You have a responsibility to be accountable to your family and your community as well as yourself.

But it is not really difference the oppressor fears so much as similarity.

Sometimes a breakdown can be the beginning of a kind of breakthrough, a way of living in advance through a trauma that prepares you for a future of radical transformation.