Freedom is difficult to define, blissful to experience, arduous to preserve. It is no easy task. We must free the self to become something utterly unique but always in the context of relationships that attune us to the other. We can only be free in the restricted confines of our own lives and yet the culture we live in must nurture that freedom for it to have a future. In these seven essays, I have sought to find a balance between the freedom each of us yearns to encounter and the freedom the whole human family aspires to experience. It is not one woman who must be free, but all women, for freedom to reach its fullest expression. Indeed, the more free one woman is, the more she is on fire to set all her sisters free. It is not one African-American's freedom which is the goal of inclusivity and equality but the freedom of all African-Americans which makes freedom ring and lets all know they are free at last.