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I am a black woman, and my experiences would not be what they are if I wasn't. I'm so happy to share those experiences for other people to be able to learn from them.

I'm really interested in women, particularly the kind of black woman who has overcome obstacles in her life and transformed.

I didn't have that many black people in my life, so I had to sort of search them out. And I didn't grow up in America, but I identified as much with their writing about the black experience as I did with their writing about the human experience.

I don't think there's enough breadth to the stories told about African-Americans.

In my time since moving to the United States, I've found that there is a dearth of great writing for black people. There are stories that depict us in a way that isn't cliched or niche, and that a white person, a Chinese person, an Indian person can watch and relate to. Those are the stories I want to be a part of telling.

Black women, whose experience is unique, are seldom recognized as a particular social-cultural entity and are seldom thought to be important enough for serious scholarly consideration.

I definitely intend to create my own work in the future so that we don't have to keep saying, We don't have work for black women.'

I used to think that I could be successful if I pretended to be a 23-year-old black woman. I wanted to find a young black woman who would be willing to go in on this with me. I would write her novels, and then she would do the touring. I always thought I was too old and the wrong color.

I can identify many different experiences that I've had over the course of my life and things that I've witnessed where it seemed that black men, specifically me or someone else may have got the, you know, different treatment than somebody else would in that same situation.

We as black people are not a monolithic bunch. We are not all the same, and neither are women. Instead, we are all individuals who have these extraordinary stories to tell and share with each other that will enrich all of our lives and help us all become more ourselves and better people.