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Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.

Somehow, I realized I could write books about black characters who reflected my own experiences or otherworldly experiences - not just stories of history, poverty and oppression.

Writing about where I was from and the people I knew was not something that would have occurred to me early on, because like so many Southerners of that period - the Sixties - I rejected those things when I went north.

As writers, we don't just need to write about poverty or war or the immigrant experience.

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

I wrote 'The Blue Sweater' to inspire more people to become engaged in working to solve the problems of global poverty.

The separate water foundations, park benches, bathrooms and restaurants of the Jim Crow South startled me. These experiences motivated my lifelong study of the status of African Americans and the sources of improvement in that status.

Writing about what happened to my brother and to my family was awful. It was hard to look back at how much suffering there was and at how certain bad situations were made worse by our decisions.