Nobody supported me; my family thought I had gone crazy. They thought, you crazy gangster, you crazy drug addict, now you want to be a writer? That's it! They totally gave up on me after that.

I'm not against knowing the history of white people in the U.S. - that's not the point. The point is that there's so much greater history. We don't know about Native Americans. Very basically, we don't know that much about African American history, except that they were enslaved. You only get bits and pieces.

The more you know, the more you owe.

We need more leaders among our gente - more teachers, politicians, businesspeople, organizers, and such. Turn the energy that many young people are putting into "war" and "death" and put it into life and true justice.

Nobody supported me; my family thought I had gone crazy. They thought, you crazy gangster, you crazy drug addict, now you want to be a writer? That's it! They totally gave up on me after that.

I had to find meaning in it. So I go through this, I see all these homies die; I see all this terrible devastation, people sitting in prison. I've been saved from prison, from death, and from heroine addiction. What am I going to do with that?

There are choices you have to make not just once