When you tell a story you automatically talk about traditions, but they're never separate from the people, the human implications. You're talking about your connections as a human being.

My great-grandmama told my grandmama the part she lived through that my grandmama didn't live through and my grandmama told my mama what they both lived through and my mama told me what they all lived through and we were suppose to pass it down like that from generation to generation so we'd never forget.

You change the rhythm of the talk and respoonse and you change the rhythm between the talk and the response.

I believe that all literatures can have political uses and misuses. Sometimes politics can enhance, sometimes it can get in the way of imaginative literature. . . . I'm not sure one can be a creative writer and a politician -- not a good politician.