“My grandmother and my two aunts were an exhibition in resilience and resourcefulness and black womanhood. They rarely talked about the unfairness of the world with the words that I use now with my ...”

“In Hawaii, family showed itself in the way that my siblings never dared to call one another "half" anything. We were fully brothers and sisters. Family appeared in the pile of rubber slippers and s...”

“Frankly, I'm not responsible for other people's perceptions and what they consider real or fake. We must abolish the entitlement that deludes us int believing that we have the right to make assumpt...”

“Rationalizing him and the glass pipe, Dad smoked crack, but he was not a crackhead; it was just something he did. To do something didn't define you, I thought.I saw Dad through a dusty lens that di...”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”