There Are No Verdicts To

Here's What I Love: When A Great Writer Turns Me Into A Jew From Chicago, A Lesbian Out Of South Carolina, Or A Black Woman Moving Into A Subway Entrance In Harlem. Turn Me Into Something Else, Writers Of The World. Make Me Muslim, Heretic, Hermaphrodite. Put Me Into A Crusader's Armor, A Cardinal's Vestments. Let Me Feel The Pygmy's Heartbeat, The Queen's Breast, The Torturer's Pleasure, The Nile's Taste, Or The Nomad's Thirst. Tell Me Everything That I Must Know. Hold Nothing Back.

Of The Yamacraw Children, I Can Say Little. I Don't Think I Changed The Quality Of Their Lives Significantly Or Altered The Inexorable Fact That They Were Imprisoned By The Very Circumstance Of Their Birth.

…then Another Porpoise Broke The Water And Rolled Toward Us. A Third And Fourth Porpoise Neared. The Visitation Was Something So Rare And Perfect That We Knew By Instinct Not To Speak—and Then As Quickly As They Had Come, The Porpoises Moved Away From Us…each Of Us Would Remember That All During Our Lives. It Was The Purest Moment Of Freedom And Headlong Exhilaration That I Had Ever Felt. A Wordless Covenant Was Set, And I Would Go Back In My Imagination, And Return To Where Happiness Seemed So Easy To Touch.

The Fruit Tasted Foreign But Indigenous, Like Sunlight A Tree Had Changed Through Patience.

The Children Of Warriors In Our Country Learn The Grace And Caution That Come From A Permanent Sense Of Estrangement.