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I'm sort of obsessed with Harlem. Just its history. My father did the music for a play called 'The Huey P. Newton Story,' and they did a lot of work in Harlem. So as a little girl, I spent a lot of time in Harlem Library.

I was raised in Harlem. I never found a book that took place in Harlem. I never had a church like mine in a book. I never had people like the people I knew. People who could not find their lives in books and celebrated felt bad about themselves. I needed to write to include the lives of these young people.

When I was 17, I worked in a mentoring program in Harlem designed to improve the community. That's when I first gained an appreciation of the Harlem Renaissance, a time when African-Americans rose to prominence in American culture. For the first time, they were taken seriously as artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and as political thinkers.

Harlem was an exciting place in the '50s. There were nightclubs that, as a student of Columbia, you dashed off to. The community seemed very viable still.

I've lived all over the world, but Harlem is very special to me, and when I decided to open a restaurant near my home, I didn't want it to be business as usual.

Harlem is a very family-oriented neighborhood, and it always has been.

I had seen the photographs of Harlem in its glory days, stylish men in bespoke suits, women so well dressed that they'd put the models in 'Vogue' to shame. I knew that Harlemites loved to dance, to pray, and to eat.

I was born in Harlem, raised in the South Bronx, went to public school, got out of public college, went into the Army, and then I just stuck with it.

I'm just a girl from Harlem who ended up in the right place at the right time.

It's still amazing, but when I was growing up, Harlem was the Mecca of black culture. I was so inspired by it, the aspirational feeling you'd get spending time there. Experiences that were really specific to that place.