I learned English by watching soaps as a kid, and since I don't have any formal education and can't teach at the universities like other literary writers do.
I'm not talking about my children's father'he's a wonderful black man, the hero of my life, and he's never disrespected or betrayed me. But I'm talking about what I see in the streets and in the media, this naked hatred that black men have towards the authentic black woman'which is really an indication of black men's hatred for blackness itself.
I'm an African woman, I suppose these thoughts torture me more than they do black American people, because it's like watching my own children trapped in a car that's sinking to the bottom of a lake and being impotent to save them'the black Americans have their own holocaust going on. You see the black man erasing black children from the landscape, you see black women desperately trying to get the black man's attention by wearing blonde hair and fake blue eyes, 500 years after he sold her and their children across the ocean.
I have this problem where it's like'I can never stop thinking. For instance, I find myself obsessing over the treatment of black women and girls by black men'the fact that black men have a special prejudice against black women and generally don't protect them or attempt to understand them, and I cry an awful lot about that.
I'm not a 'strong warrior queen' like people think. I spend most of my day cooking and doing things with my sons.
I'm not told what to say by any Republicans and I've never done a personal appearance topless.
The rumors about me being with Jamal Lewis, Adam Carolla and Tiki Barber are absolutely false. I've never even met Adam or Tiki Barber in person'we did phone interviews. What happens is that a lot of high-profile men saw topless photos of me.
I feel as if I'm going through a mid-life crisis. I don't feel very attractive and it's like I'm frigid or something. I'm aging and it makes me very sad.
Men always liked me, because I was very damaged and unpredictable, my children's father claims that I have multiple personalities, but I don't.
My sons are very protective and loving towards me, but I don't know what's in their secret minds about me.
When I couldn't speak English, I loved silent films circa 1914-1929, Abel Gance being my favorite director.
I loved 1930's women's pictures'films by Josef Von Sternberg or William Wyler. So, I fashioned a style out of that. The integrity and ethos of what I would write, however, came from the films of Ousmane Sembene and from reading Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath and Alice Walker.
I was adopted my black Americans, I feel that I'm a 'Hybrid'. When I'm around Africans'I suddenly feel very black American. And when I'm around black Americans'I feel very North African. North Africa and black America are both the creators of Kola Boof.
As for developing a writing style'I would say that I tried to copy the pacing of the old movies I loved as a kid.
I warn black Americans'don't get too mixed. A little is fine, but not to the point where you're out of the family.
I don't see a huge difference between the African condition and the black American condition. The only real difference is that black Americans live in the richest country on Earth surrounded by a majority white population and are almost entirely disconnected from their original culture and their God-given identity.
Even though I couldn't speak English, there were many times that my black-American parents could read my mind and I could read theirs.
Race means family and all black people whether they like it or not, are family.
Because I was in psychiatric treatment for most of my childhood and had to learn English and had to adjust to a white-dominated society, I truly know what being Sudanese refugees [adopting by white family] mean. It's not something that you can explain in the confines of an interview, but there is an immediate comfort, a connection between black phenotypes that is natural.
I'm not at all against white people adopting black children, because we're all human beings who need to give love and be nurtured in safety, but I do think it's better to be adopted by blacks.
I happen to know at least a hundred Sudanese refugees in the United States, all of whom were taken in by white families and white churches, and they all tell me''Naima, you were blessed to be raised by Black Americans.'
I never wanted anyone to know about me and Osama [Bin Laden]. I wanted that to be a secret that I carried to my grave, and since I wasn't the one who revealed it'it's definitely something that I wish was in the closet. It's destroyed my career.
People don't want truth, they just want trash.
When my birth parents were murdered, I stayed outdoors all night with the bodies. Years later in America, around fourteen, my psychiatrist explained to me that staying with the bodies that night made me fearless. He said that it made me an 'emotional exhibitionist' and told me never to let people convince me that I was weird for speaking with clarity and passion.
There are more than 100 million African women who go topless at some point in the day, each and every day, to honor both God and our ancestors. So being in a country like America where nothing is hated more than the image of the black woman, even by black people'because her womb produces the black man and makes us black'I find it of grave importance to implement African images, and especially to produce media images that acknowledge the sexual power and fertility of black women.
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