Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

I had a fantasy as a child that I might be a writer someday. I always thought that meant you went to New York or Paris. But after that intense summer, I never thought that I wanted to live any place but Chicago. It also made me see what the stakes were in the civil rights movement. And it made me see what real hatred was like and the forms that it took. But it also made me understand how powerless ordinary people feel in their lives.

I have a friend who lives in the South Side of Chicago. I helped out at a church charity there where they try to give a bit of cohesion to a desperate area. Everyone was very welcoming

My parents were liberal intellectuals but even they expected me to stay at home and look after my younger siblings and do the housework.

Sometimes I panic and think I can't really write.

Never underestimate a man's ability to underestimate a woman.

And the fury in my community was just staggering. The young priests in the parish were behind the message. The older priests weren't necessarily, but they all followed the orders of the cardinal and read the letter. Every Sunday, 2,000 people came to mass at that parish. The following Sunday, the attendance dropped to 200, and never recovered.