I never wanted anyone to know about me and Osama [Bin Laden]. I wanted that to be a secret that I carried to my grave, and since I wasn't the one who revealed it'it's definitely something that I wish was in the closet. It's destroyed my career.

I value men and I don't necessarily want to adopt the man's role, but I do want to see women's humanity honored and respected.

I'm an African woman, I suppose these thoughts torture me more than they do black American people, because it's like watching my own children trapped in a car that's sinking to the bottom of a lake and being impotent to save them'the black Americans have their own holocaust going on. You see the black man erasing black children from the landscape, you see black women desperately trying to get the black man's attention by wearing blonde hair and fake blue eyes, 500 years after he sold her and their children across the ocean.

I wasn't allowed to use people's real names, such as my siblings and my children's father, but there's nothing fabricated or untrue in my autobiography.

As for feminism, I am a womanist more than I'm a feminist.

I don't see a huge difference between the African condition and the black American condition. The only real difference is that black Americans live in the richest country on Earth surrounded by a majority white population and are almost entirely disconnected from their original culture and their God-given identity.

My sons are very protective and loving towards me, but I don't know what's in their secret minds about me.