I always thought insanity would be a dark, bitter feeling, but it is drenching and delicious if you really roll around in it.

She hug me around my neck, say, "You're righter than Miss Taylor." I tear up then. My cup is spilling over. Those is new words to me.

I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1969, in a time and place where no one was saying, Look how far weve come, because we hadnt come very far, to say the least. Although Jacksons population was half white and half black, I didnt have a single black friend or a black neighbor or even a black person in my school.

I look deep into her rich brown eyes and she look into mine. Law, she got old-soul eyes, like she done lived a thousand years. And I swear I see, down inside, the woman she gone grow up to be. She is tall and straight. She is proud. She got a better haircut. And she is remembering the words I put in her head. Remembering as a full-grown woman.

It can be really powerful to write something when youre sad.

Everyone knows how we white people feel, the glorified Mammy figure who dedicates her whole life to a white family. Margaret Mitchell covered that. But no one ever asked Mammy how she felt about it.

When you little, you only get asked two questions, what’s your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.