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I was lucky to have my dad in my life. As crazy as things got, I always had him to put his hand on my shoulder.

Since my brother died in 1982, my parents and I had formed a shaky tripod of a family; now that I'd lost my father too, it was too easy for me to glimpse a future point where I alone was the keeper of not just my own childhood memories, but of my family lore.

I held my father's hand while he died of cancer, and it's really painful when you do something like that up close and personal. My mother was already gone, and I was very, very close to my father.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

My earliest memories are the best. I always try to remember the good times when Daddy was alive.

My main memories of my father are of his illness.

My earliest memories are of the civil rights era. My earliest experiences were rage.