The breezes of the West African night were intimate and shy, licking the hair, sweeping through cotton dresses with unseemly intimacy, then disappearing into the utter blackness.
Reality has changed chameleonlike before my eyes so many times that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything except what appears to be so.
Blacks concede that hurrawing, jibing, jiving, signifying, disrespecting, cursing, even outright insults might be acceptable under particular conditions, but aspersions cast against one’s family call for immediate attack.
Home is that youthful region where a child is the only real living inhabitant. Parents, siblings, and neighbors are mysterious apparitions who come, go, and do strange unfathomable thing in and around the child, the region’s only enfranchised citizen.
The woman who truly intends to live a good life is already living phenomenally since intent is part of the achievement.
In an unfamiliar culture, it is wise to offer no innovations, no suggestions, or lessons.
Always in the black spirituals there’s that promise that things are going to be better, by and by.
Oh, the holiness of being the injured party.
I find in my poetry and prose the rhythms and imagery of the best – I mean, when I’m at my best – of the good Southern black preachers. The lyricism of the spirituals and the directness of gospel songs and the mystery of blues are in my music or in my poetry and prose, or I missed everything.
I suggest that the great art belongs to all people, all the time – that indeed it is made for the people, by the people, to the people.
When I try to describe myself to God I say, “Lord, remember me? Black? Female? Six-foot tall? The writer?” And I almost always get God’s attention.
I write because I am a Black woman, listening attentively to her people.
I also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when I write. I suppose I hope by doing that I will keep my brains from seeping out of my scalp and running in great gray blobs down my neck, into my ears, and over my face.
I am not competing with anyone other than myself. I want to be excellent at whatever I do.
Y’all dropped the ball and you should be shamed.
I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.
You never get over the fear of writing.
The music was my friend, my lover, my family.
A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a woman called by a devaluing name will only be weakened by the misnomer.
If our children are to approve of themselves, they must see that we approve of ourselves.