Kuumba, or creativity, is the sixth Kwanzaa principle.

Like the X-Men hero Sunspot, the American writer harnesses energy in order to overcome a system driven to foil humanity. His stories are heroic and he is the arch nemesis of oppression.

American novelist Alice Walker views black and white writers as all telling "… one immense story – the same story, for the most part – with different parts of this immense story coming from a multitude of different perspectives."

She indicates that we’re all recording humanity but through different lenses. The sun is yellow no matter the skin shade, and it is bright, warm and scorching. Every American squints when they glance at the blinding sky.

"By comparison, black writers seem always involved in a moral and/or physical struggle, the result of which is expected to be some kind of larger freedom," Walker writes.

The struggle is for a larger freedom: The writer’s creation challenges Americans to transcend beyond venomous emotions in order to tell the same story.

European-Americans are loving humans whom we love, but like an abused spouse, African-Americans lack the ability to stop loving those who do not love us.

So like Sunspot, the American writer wraps himself in warming rays of creativity to ascertain artistic freedom and a kindred relationship with the sun.

Frederick-Douglass Knowles II is associate professor of English at Three Rivers Community College.