Wedding films are always about the differences between people. But they haven't quite dealt with African-Americans and Latinos.

Something that I think extends to a lot of African cultures is that the line between performer and audience is blurry. My mom would lead the wedding song regularly, and she isn't a professional singer. Even as an audience member, you're expected to clap and sing the response to the lead.

If I don't make heritage visible and the strength of mother tongue important for my grandchildren, it scares me that they might say in 20 years from now, 'Well, it is rumoured that we used to be Africans long ago.' And in many urban areas, it's already happening.

The power of Haitian heritage and the strength of the Haitian people is tremendous. And Haiti holds a unique and rich role in the history of African Americans.

Being African American and Jewish, I have plenty of ancestors and family members that I can look to for strength and, more importantly, for a grateful outlook on life.

Sports and entertainment have always been windows of opportunity for African Americans, when other doors were closed.

The biggest lesson from Africa was that life's joys come mostly from relationships and friendships, not from material things. I saw time and again how much fun Africans had with their families and friends and on the sports fields; they laughed all the time.

There are so many women who contributed in a very real way in pushing for the space program during the time in which there was a lot of competition to get into space first, and to know that there were African-American women who were integral in that success is pretty phenomenal.

Some African leaders actually dare to suggest that democracy is a concept alien to traditional African society. This is one of the most impudent political blasphemies I can think of.

I just want my daughter to grow up in a society where she feels accepted being South African, German and Ukrainian.

The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

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.

The mentality with African and European people is different. In Africa, when you come from a difficult life, when it's not so easy to eat, not so easy to survive, you respect money when you start to earn it, and you respect people more. When you respect people, they will respect you, and your life is better for that.

I'm African-American. I'd rather follow an African religion. That's my heritage.

The thing that is being lost is heritage. In Africa, religion and advertisement and television and media hype have gotten Africans to where they are convinced psychologically that their own heritage is heathen, pagan, barbaric, savage, primitive.

I'm Nigerian. I'm African. I have a lot to say. Apart from what I say, though, is the feeling. People can relate to that feeling. It's a reciprocal relationship. They feed off me and I feed off them.

Most African women are taught to endure abusive marriages. They say endurance means a good wife but most women endure abusive relationship because they are not empowered economically; they depend on their husbands.

I'm African-American. There are more eyes on me than anybody. They're going to take the negative before the positive.

As an African-American male born with a couple of strikes against you because of your skin color, I think it's very, very important to have some positive role models around, especially male influences.

I wrote some bad poetry that I published in North African journals, but even as I withdrew into this reading, I also led the life of a kind of young hooligan.

I have a pet lizard named Puff, five goldfish - named Pinky, Brain, Jowels, Pearl and Sandy, an oscar fish named Chef, two pacus, an albino African frog named Whitey, a bonsai tree, four Venus flytraps, a fruit fly farm and sea monkeys.

I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.

My audience went, 'Wait, why is she singing jazz? What's going on?' And then they went, 'Oh, because she can. Because she loves it.' And jazz, a music invented by the African-American community, is the greatest art form, I believe, to have ever come out of this country.

First of all, the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.