Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person.

There were people thrice her size on the Trenton platform and she looked admiringly at one of them, a woman in a very short skirt. She thought nothing of slender legs shown off in miniskirts--it was safe and easy, after all, to display legs of which the world approved--but the fat woman's act was about the quiet conviction that one shared only with oneself, a sense of rightness that others failed to see.

Feminist: A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.

She could not complain about not having shoes when the person she was talking to had no legs.

This is our world, although the people who drew this map decided to put their own land on top of ours. There is no top or bottom, you see.

The higher you go, the fewer women there are.

Papa sat down at the table and poured his tea from the china tea set with pink flowers on the edges. I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you love.