The journey has been incredible from its beginning.

My father was a tomato farmer. There is the phrase that says he or she worked their fingers to the bone, well, that's my dad. And he was a very good man.

I didn't run into racism until we moved to Nassau when I was ten and a half, but it was vastly different from the kind of horrendous oppression that black people in Miami were under when I moved there at 15. I found Florida an antihuman place.

So I had to be careful. I recognized the responsibility that, whether I liked it or not, I had to accept whatever the obligation was. That was to behave in a manner, to carry myself in such a professional way, as if there ever is a reflection, it's a positive one.

I couldn't adjust to the racism in Florida. It was so blatant... I had never been so described as Florida described me.

So it's been kind of a long road, but it was a good journey altogether.

I sometimes like the pictures photographers take of me.