Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.
I know Juffure was a British trading post and my portrait of the village bears no resemblance to the way it was. But the portrait I gave was true of nearly all the other villages in Gambia. I, we, need a place called Eden. My people need Pilgrim's Rock.
I was born in the West Village in New York, and then when I was about four my family moved to what they joke is the suburbs, the Upper West Side. I lived there for most of my childhood.
You could say I was born into entrepreneurship. My grandmother, who was from Sierra Leone, was left to raise four children in the 1940s in a rural village in West Africa after becoming a young widow. To support her family, she made natural skin and hair care preparations and sold them primarily to missionaries and villagers.
The Merchant Marines fight piracy all over the world. We fight piracy in the Philippines, the east and west coast of Africa, and the east and west coast of South America.
Left ear, I wear four earrings. The four is symbolic of the four seasons, spring, winter, summer and fall, the four directions, north, east, south and west, the four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Africa is not just about where you are born. For me, Africa is the whole continent; from south to north, to east to west.
I moved to the east coast when everybody else was going to the west coast. I (then) chased it back toward the west coast. I built my career up by doing small roles (which led) to principal roles and getting bumped into main character roles.
No, I don't think about the myth of the West. It's not the kind of thinking I do. That's more suited to people who live in big towns on the West Coast or East Coast, people who stay under a roof, in a room, all the time.
I grew up in a quiet suburb in South Texas, and loved the in-your-faceness of the East Village. In the early days, when I was still unemployed, I'd lie on a bench in Tompkins Square Park perusing the listings in the 'Village Voice' for a place to live.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I split my time between the West Coast and the East.
I'm not West Coast at all. I was born in Atlanta, but I grew up in Kentucky, outside of Lexington, in Winchester.
I was drawn to West Africa. I did listen to a bunch of different styles of African music, and there was something about the percussion and the drums of West Africa, and the energy, that felt so cinematic to me.
As the West Coast offense has spread out among the NFL, as all of Bill Walsh's assistants and all of Mike Holmgren's assistants have gone on to be head coaches, it's all the West Coast offense, but it's all a little different, tailored to the personnel or the coordinators or the resources each team has.
We also want to try and slow down all this foolishness that's going on between the East and West. We gotta understand that Hip Hop is now universal. Hip Hop is not East coast or West coast.
My father ran a famous L.A. nightclub complete with roller-rink - Flippers - in the early Eighties which was the West Coast's answer to Studio 54.
Just take the lack of presence of F1 in the United States. In theory - and logically - you would have an East Coast Grand Prix, a West Coast Grand Prix, and I think you should have a street race in Detroit - it is still the motor capital of the US. You stay in the US for four weeks and could have two to three races, certainly two.