It's not true that voting doesn't make a difference. To check out is political suicide. This is especially true for our young black artists. You don't want to inadvertently end up doing someone's bidding.

The rise of fascism in Europe sent most Americans home. Some black American communists who had emigrated to the Soviet Union perished in Stalin's purges of the late 1930s.

Home is the place where there is somebody who does not wish you any pain.

Marriage equality is a very middle-class issue and voting rights is a very working-class issue. If you do not vote, who are you speaking for? Who will be the next Fannie Lou Hamer? If not you or someone you know, then who?

I can see criticizing, complaining, protesting - anything but choosing not to vote. Too many people died for us not to vote.

When you're writing fiction it's a heightened voice. You're trying to cast a spell, which isn't the same thing as trying to cast someone into it. You are creating a reality but it's a different sort of performance.

There's a class divide in black America that doesn't seem to trouble black Americans so much, but whites use it and exploit it. The progress of a few is allowed to stand for the progress of everyone. We can't afford that kind of disaffection at the moment.