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All black women aren't sassy, loud, difficult, or subservient. We are, in fact, very complex and very diverse, living very complex and diverse lives. That point cannot be made enough.

Both European and American historians have done away with any conceptual limits on what in the past needs and deserves investigating. The result, among other things, has been a flood of works on gender history, black history, and ethnic history of all kinds.

I feel a responsibility to continue creating complex roles for black women, especially young black women.

One of the greatest gifts of Black feminism to ourselves has been to make it a little easier simply to be Black and female.

We as men, in particular black men, are constantly supported, nurtured, forgiven, apologized for, led, followed and coddled by black women, and they get very little in return.

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.

So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.

I am interested in people living in the margins of society, and I do have a mission to tell the stories of women of colour in particular. I feel we've been present throughout history, but our voices have been neglected.

I love writing about black women, but if you go beyond that, we're human beings - and because we're human beings, it's universal for everybody.

Black history is American history.