Use missteps as stepping stones to deeper understanding and greater achievement.

I write about spirituality not so we get strong from within and achieve some state of nirvana and then distance ourselves from the real world. I write about it so we can feel empowered to doing the critical work that this generation of black women are charged with doing.

Historically, black women have suffered tremendously, but today's black women are the triumph. We have choices, and that's what freedom is all about: having the power to choose.

Occasionally, I have to think like myself to remember where I put something.

I find that it takes a lot of years of living, and many more of reckoning, to come up with one worthwhile paragraph. And when a deadline looms, prayer doesn't hurt, either.

As a child of God, I am greater than anything that can happen to me.

This is God's world this is not the media's world.

When I first came to Harvard, I thought to myself, 'What kind of an Indian am I?' because I did not grow up on a reservation. But being an Indian is a combination of things. It's your blood. It's your spirituality. And it's fighting for the Indian people.