As African-Americans, that's what's being played fast and loose with, our citizenship. When you have the Trayvon Martins and the Michael Browns being shot and killed, it's because, on a certain level, there is a kind of mutability in the understanding of citizenship around the black body.

The book, 'Citizen,' begins with daily encounters, little moments, places where language reveals how racism determines how we interact.

When you are alone and too tired even to turn on any of your devices, you let yourself linger in a past stacked among your pillows.

If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights movement made demands that altered the course of American lives and backed up those demands with the willingness to give up your life in service of your civil rights, with Black Lives Matter, a more internalized change is being asked for: recognition.

When we had a good relationship between North Korea and South Korea, we always connected with sports.

I write first drafts by hand. Never do I open an umbrella inside the house. I don't predict wins or losses. I used to stand on a certain piece of rug if my brothers and husband were watching football and their team got in trouble - but now the luck went out of that rug. If a circle is involved, I try to go clockwise.

Every kid who just played basketball knew about the Boston Celtics. They're one of the few teams who were always on national TV along with the Lakers.

I went to an ACC school, Wake Forest, I'm a big college basketball fan, and it was just a natural interest for me.