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My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.

I wanted my art to deal with very formal concerns and to deal with very material concerns, and to deal with antecedents and art history, which for me go very far beyond just the influence of African-American artists.

For African-American people, I am in the business of inventing a reality that gives a different perspective - on history, on crime, on art, on love.

I try to find the core values that are so fundamental that they transcend ethnic identity. That doesn't mean I run from it. I embrace African-American culture and I love it and embrace it, but it is a part of a human identity. So I'm always trying to make a larger human statement.

My composition often goes toward the black middle class or the black super-wealthy or strong historical black figures.

We can't all work in the inner city. And, I don't even think that it is incumbent upon an African-American intellectual to be concerned in their work with problems of race and class. It's just one of the things, that we here at the DuBois Institute, are concerned about.

I'm an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.

It's one thing when other African-Americans try to threaten my race card, but when people outside of my ethnicity have the audacity to question how 'down' I am because of the bleak, stereotypical picture pop culture has painted for me as a black woman? Unacceptable.

I think ethnic and regional labels are insulting to writers and really put restrictions on them. People don't think your work is quite as universal.