Can you become The hope I need? Can you help me be More than it is written in my future Or past? Is there another me to find?

Books transmit values. They explore our common humanity. What is the message when some children are not represented in those books?

America believes what's good for us is good for the world. It's very difficult to understand that that's not necessarily true.

No matter what...ball made my heart beat faster, made me want to jump up and down and be Superman. That's what life was about anyway, being Superman and living like life itself was important. Basketball made my life important.

There is a crisis involving reading in certain communities.

If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?

I keep threatening to keep a formal journal, but whenever I start one it instantly becomes an exercise in self-consciousness. Instead of a journal I manage to have dozens of notebooks with bits and pieces of stories, poems, and notes. Almost every thing I do has its beginning in a notebook of some sort, usually written on a bus or train.