Take away the miseries and you take away some folks’ reason for living. Their conversation piece anyway. - Toni Cade Bambara

"I’m available to any and every adventure of the human breath.”

I read everybody I can get to, and I appreciate the way "American literature" is being redefined now that the Black community is dialoguing without defensive postures, now that the Puerto Rican writers are coming through loud and clear, and the Chicano and Chicana writers, and Native American and Asian-American.

Grandma Dorothy, in an effort to encourage our minds to leap, would tell us, "Of course we know how to walk on the water, of course we know how to fly; fear of sinking, though, sometimes keeps us from the first crucial move, then too, the terrible educations you liable to get is designed to make you destruct the journey entire. So send your minds on home to the motherland and just tell the tale, you little honeys." And my mama-not one to traffic in metaphors usually, being a very scientific woman-would add, "Yeah, speak your speak, 'cause every silence you maintain is liable to become first a lump in your throat, then a lump in your lymphatic system."