As for developing a writing style'I would say that I tried to copy the pacing of the old movies I loved as a kid.

I wrote about my life just as I remembered it. I named names and it's very detailed. Hundreds of Sudanese refugees and people from Africa say that my journey is very similar to theirs.

I have much more power and protection than Salman Rushdie, because I'm an American citizen, but yes, I live in terrible fear for my life and for the lives of my children. My whole family has been threatened, my adoptive parents had to sell their house and move out of Washington, D.C. because of death threats caused by my work and activism.

I'm not talking about my children's father'he's a wonderful black man, the hero of my life, and he's never disrespected or betrayed me. But I'm talking about what I see in the streets and in the media, this naked hatred that black men have towards the authentic black woman'which is really an indication of black men's hatred for blackness itself.

I loved 1930's women's pictures'films by Josef Von Sternberg or William Wyler. So, I fashioned a style out of that. The integrity and ethos of what I would write, however, came from the films of Ousmane Sembene and from reading Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath and Alice Walker.

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.

When I couldn't speak English, I loved silent films circa 1914-1929, Abel Gance being my favorite director.