I had people read it early on and, you know, well-meaning people said to me, you should take out the blogs. I didn't get much positive feedback. Only because most of these people were protective of me - it was sort of like a "tone it down, make it easier to swallow" kind of thing. And I just thought if I do that then it's not the book I want to write.

Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.

How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined.

Never ever accept 'Because You Are A Woman' as a reason for doing or not doing anything.

Racism should never have happened and so you don't get a cookie for reducing it.

When we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.

I am a bit of a fundamentalist when it comes to black women's hair. Hair is hair - yet also about larger questions: self-acceptance, insecurity and what the world tells you is beautiful. For many black women, the idea of wearing their hair naturally is unbearable.