How do you think your own parents have shaped your life? You say in your book that your own parenting skills started with them — how so?

Both my parents have had and still have a tremendous impact on my life and they've shaped my parenting very profoundly. They were the perfect parents, showering me with the kind of love that I knew would always be there. They actively participated. I don't think my mother — or father — ever missed a PTA meeting. I was born in the late 1940s, and for black families, it wasn't always easy to have more than the necessities. But as I said, they made me feel rich.

Kanye has said that his family says, "Shy is next to stupid. Speak up!" And you have said you encouraged him to always speak up. Do you think he gets a bad rap when people say he is arrogant for making comments like the one when he said that best thing about hip-hop in 2004 was himself? What about the Bush comments — he is clearly agitated and passionate in the entire clip [when during a televised fund-raiser for Hurricane Katrina victims, he strayed from the script and said that the president didn't care about black people], but do you think those comments were appropriate?

We live in a society where it's prudent to be politically correct; some would say it's not wise to speak your mind and tell the truth. But I feel that if you feel strongly about an issue and you think about an issue … you have every right to do it — there's free speech. ... Kanye's first question was, 'Do you think anybody would want to read that book? They'd probably want to read it more if there was some big problem between the two of us. Do you think they'll want to read it when we have this wonderful relationship?' There's not a lot of people in the world, I don't think, like Kanye, in terms of him keeping it real. … I think that's one of the fundamental tenets of hip-hop, is keeping it real. People say Kanye is a preppy, he's a mama's boy and all of these things. And all of those are true, but you can't find someone who keeps it more real than Kanye. He's not going out there rapping about blowing someone's head off when he's never so much as owned a gun. In my view, there is to be some consideration for what is politically correct, but there is to be more consideration for telling the truth and making the most positive impact on society that we can. I don't necessarily think that he thought about [the Bush comment] … Kanye is really, I think, a very good spokesperson. He's a very critical and analytical thinker, as he was taught to be … If you think that what is happening is very unjust, and you have the platform like Kanye to call attention to it, I think it's very responsible of him to do that, and it's the responsibility of the person listening to decide if they agree.  
    
Do you think the fact that Kanye was raised by intellectuals in a middle class environment has made him a new and different voice that hip hop needed?

I can't really comment on how other people who became stars were raised. … I do know that yes, I do think that Kanye is a voice that can definitely be used and should be used not only in hip-hop but across the arts, period. I think he is broader than a genre. … I think he has a calling to reach a number of people. Kanye keeps it real. He touches the people. You never know how words can save a person's life, physically or otherwise. People like Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi or, in my view, Barack Obama, or Jesus Christ — people whose job it is to tell the truth — I see that in Kanye. Now, people like you are gonna go, 'Oh, Kanye's mom said he's like Jesus!' but … when you have a gift, you didn't get it by yourself. … Your truth is your truth.