Toni Cade Bambara said: “Writing is the way I participate in the struggle.”

These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance.

I think it's hard to write a book about happiness because fiction requires tension and complication.

We live now in a global culture where anything that happens in a place that's 90 minutes from your shores really affects you.

One of the things that sparked my interest in this is the case of Emmanuel Constant, who started a militia called FRAPH that was backed by the CIA. FRAPH killed thousands of Haitians in the early 1990s. Now while Constant is living comfortably in Queens, other Haitians are being deported. I wanted to see how those who have been bruised by people like that deal with coming face to face with their torturers.

The girl she said, I didn’t tell you this because it was a small thing, but little girls, they leave their hearts at home when they walk outside. Hearts are so precious. They don’t want to lose them.

People who want alternative information have to try so hard to find it.