It Took Me Sixteen Years To Write.

Personally I Always Feel Like I Could Use A Little More Of Poetry Apothegmatic Power In My Own Work But We're Always Lacking Something.

This Country Has Such Little Sense Of Itself Sometimes, I'm Astonished. America Is One Of The Biggest Myth-making Countries, Whether We're Talking About How Many Books Are Published, How Many Movies We Make. But The Greatest Myth Of All Is What America Is.

I Mean In The Community That I Grew Up In, You Know, A Very, You Know, Mixed, Almost Entirely African Diaspora Community, One Of The Things That We Were Not Ever Supposed To Say Was How Much Self-hatred And Colorism Determined And Guided What We Would Call Our Desire. In Other Words, What We Would Consider Beautiful.

I Was Part Of That Group Of Kids Growing Up In The '80s Under The Reagan Regime, What I Used To Call 'living In The Shadow Of Dr. Manhattan,' Where We Would Have Dreams All The Time That New York City Was Being Destroyed, And That That Wall Of Light And Destruction Was Rolling Out And Would Just Devour Our Neighborhood.

Anger Has A Way Of Returning.