I have many problems in my life, but I don't think that identity is one of them.

Why must we always talk about race anyway? Can't we just be human beings? And Professor Hunk replied - that is exactly what white privilege is, that you can say that. Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.

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

We teach girls shame; close your legs, cover yourself, we make them feel as though by being born female they're already guilty of something.

We did that often, asking each other questions whose answers we already knew. Perhaps it was so that we would not ask the other questions, the ones whose answers we did not want to know.

I had consumed a lot of American culture, but I was not quite prepared for the reality of American poverty.

Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye … I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.