Class, Race, Sexuality, Gender And All Other

I Have Wanted Everything As A Writer And A Woman, But Most Of All A World Changed Utterly By My Revelations.

I Wanted To Start Over Completely, To Begin Again As New People With Nothing Of The Past Left Over. I Wanted To Run Away From Who We Had Been Seen To Be, Who We Had Been... It's The First Thing I Think Of When Trouble Comes - The Geographic Solution. Change Your Name, Leave Town, Disappear, Make Yourself Over. What Hides Behind That Impulse Is The Conviction That The Life You Have Lived, The Person You Are, Is Valueless, Better Off Abandoned, That Running Away Is Easier Than Trying To Change Things, That Change Itself Is Not Possible.

Things Come Apart So Easily When They Have Been Held Together With Lies.

I Need You To Do More Than Survive. As Writers, As Revolutionaries, Tell The Truth, Your Truth In Your Own Way. Do Not Buy Into Their System Of Censorship, Imagining That If You Drop This Character Or Hide That Emotion, You Can Slide Through Their Blockades. Do Not Eat Your Heart Out In The Hope Of Pleasing Them.

He Never Said "don't Tell Your Mama." He Never Had To Say It. I Did Not Know How To Tell Anyone What I Felt, What Scared Me And Shamed Me... (109)