It turns out one of my ancestors fought in the Continental Army, so I was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution.

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black. In Brazil, it's almost as if one drop of white ancestry makes you white.

Learning to sing one's own songs, to trust the particular cadences of own's voices, is also the goal of any writer.

Ever since I watched 'Roots,' I've dreamed of tracing my African ancestry and helping other people do the same.

Really, the values under which my generation was raised in the '50s were immigrant values even though we weren't immigrants. The greatest thing you could be was a college-educated Negro.

Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape their direction. All great writers demand great critics.

What's fascinated me from the time I was a little kid was the way we construct our lives through stories.