Anger Is A Wasted Emotion.

After The Dance Was My First Attempt At Nonfiction. I'd Never Really Participated In Carnival, And I Really Wanted To Go. It Sounded Like A Wonderfully Fun Thing To Do. And I Wanted To Write Something Happy About Haiti, Something Celebratory. And Going To Carnival Gave Me A Chance To Do That, Because It Is One Of The Instances In Haiti When People Shed Their Class Separation And Come Together.

These Were Our Bedtime Stories. Tales That Haunted Our Parents And Made Them Laugh At The Same Time. We Never Understood Them Until We Were Fully Grown And They Became Our Sole Inheritance.

I Come From A Place Where Breath, Eyes, And Memory Are One, A Place From Which You Carry Your Past Like A Hair On Your Head. Where Women Return To Their Children As Butterflies Or As Tears In The Eyes Of The Statues That Their Daughters Pray To

The Way The Media Cycle Works, The Way The News Works, And The Way People's Attention Span Works, Is That We Only Learn That People Exist When There Is Crisis.

Toni Cade Bambara Said: “writing Is The Way I Participate In The Struggle.”