If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.

Married at 23, a mother at 24, and blindsided by divorce at 28, I found myself struggling, like many young women I meet today, to strike a balance between my personal life and my career.

Very few women manage to have it all; certainly not all at once.

I was devastated when I got the review for my first book. The book came out a couple years before the women's movement broke through, and people were putting it down, asking, 'Why does the woman in this book need to get a divorce? Why can't she just shut up and be happy?'

My mum and dad teach, and all my brothers and sisters have been in 'Riverdance' and so forth. So I was forced to become a dancer; it's part of my family history.

I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.

We must work to change in our hearts and minds what it looks like to be undocumented. It is the high schooler dreaming of college who isn't aware of his status. It is the single mother working grueling hours in a warehouse just to provide for her children. It is the family that sits next to you in church. It is your neighbor.

As its citizens humbly recommit to an acceptance of guidance from the God of our fathers, our nation will once again see the miraculous resurrection of the proud, responsible, visionary black father. And with him, his family and community will be lifted.