It's not a matter of whether the reviews of your books are good or bad, it's about being taken seriously, both as a woman writer and as a writer of color. Also, it worries me when people point to a couple of women writers or writers of color who get some attention - and I am sometimes pulled into that category - to prove that others are getting a fair shot. It's like those people who keep saying that racism no longer exists in this country because Barack Obama was a President of the United States.

...women, brave as stars at dawn

To be able to create you have to have peace of mind on some level.

I would hate for people to generalize about every Haitian from something that one Haitian did, or a group of Haitians did.

There are many possible interpretations of what it means to create dangerously, and Albert Camus, like the poet Osip Mandelstam, suggests that it is creating as a revolt against silence, creating when both the creation and the reception, the writing and the reading, are dangerous undertakings, disobedience to a directive.

People think that there is a country there that these people are only around when they are on CNN. I don't think that's limited to Haiti.

Art is a luxury but also a necessity.