The minute my child was born, I was reborn as a feminist. It's so incredible what women can do... birthing naturally, as most women do around the globe, is a superhuman act. You leave behind the comforts of being human and plunge back into being an animal.

I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.

But to me, the most important page in my daughter's book is the last one - because it's blank. It says, "Your Hero's Photo Here," and, "Your Hero's Story Here."

No work-family balance will ever fully take hold if the social conditions that might make it possible - men who are willing to share parenting and housework, communities that value work in the home as highly as work on the job, and policymakers and elected officials who are prepared to demand family-friendly reforms - remain out of reach.

My mother never, ever told me about evilness. She only saw the beautiful things... she wanted to protect me from it.

[Motherhood is] the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It's huge and scary-it's an act of infinite optimism.