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I do want to be a representative of the African community, and I want to hold myself and dress myself in a way that reflects that. I want black kids to see me and think, 'Okay, he's carrying himself as a black man, and that's how a black man should carry himself.'

I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that race must be the most important thing about me. Is that what I want on my gravestone: Here lies an African American?

I am an African-American in America. That will never change. But I don't have to be defined by that.

I don't want the whole of my writing or my intellectual energy given over to race because I have diverse interests.

I know no national boundary where the Negro is concerned. The whole world is my province until Africa is free.

Me being a black girl in London, whose mom is first-generation African and whose dad is West Indian, gives me a different view. I'm coming at soul from my own place.

I realize that I'm black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and this is everybody's wish.

There are a lot of challenges I undeniably have faced as a black person both in the U.K. and in the U.S. that contrived to make me feel lesser than what I am.

I think that black people, to a degree, need to have a certain level of dexterity. If we want to be at the highest level of whatever our field is, we have to be able to navigate both worlds. We all just know that you gotta be able to put that suit on and have a conversation with people that don't look like you or your family.