Bonnie Greer

When I was a child, to call someone 'black' was an insult, a curse word, something that made you fight.But to me it contains all of the history of oppression and resistance, of being close to the soil and the sky, of plain speaking. Of The Journey.

She was tall and dark-skinned and looked like a Nigerian sculpture. She moved like a lioness, her every step bristling with suppressed violence.

The official erasure of any existence before enslavement _ as if black Americans did not exist before the yolk and the chains and whip _ has always created a passion for us.Black people need to find out. We have to find out Who We Are and Where We Come From.

The gap that was created during those transatlantic voyages hundreds of years ago.That gap is the matrix of Saudade _ The Longing, I think, that all Africans in the West have, that is at the root of the blues and jazz and soul and rap. If you listen you can hear it, elusive, fleeting, full of melancholy anger.