I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives.

If anything is life-changing, being the descendant of a slave is.

Multiculturalism is a white people joke.

Multiculturalism isn't about culture, it's about power.

I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager... and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that.

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don't even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

White people use their literature to maintain culture. That's why you find references to Milton and Spencer and Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in contemporary novels.