As you know, I am neither Roman Catholic, Protestant Episcopalian, nor Presbyterian, nor am I an Irishman.

I teach well. I used to really like teaching a lot. I enjoyed it a lot and I was good at it.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.

My dad was in the Army and we traveled all over the place and I never failed to win first prize.

I dropped out of high school four times between the ages of 12 to 17.

When I enrolled in college at age 19, I had a total of eight years of formal classroom education. As a result, I was not comfortable with formal lectures and receiving regular homework assignments.

I’ve never written a book before.

I was born at the age of twelve on an MGM lot.

My father was a schoolteacher and my mother came from a teacher’s family.

The first book I wrote was The Bride Price which was a romantic book, but my husband burnt the book when he saw it. I was the typical African woman, I’d done this privately, I wanted him to look at it, approve it and he said he wouldn’t read it.