[My grandmother] was the assistant pastor at Palma Ceia Baptist Church in Hayward - my grandmother, Evie Goines. And so my mother was doing - I remember when my mother graduated from beauty college, so I was about 5, and so I guess she was about 21. And I just remember being there, taking the pictures and seeing her get her diploma and everything. But she was doing hair for many years. during that time, she kind of started to discover or tap into her religious studies. It was around the time I was starting to go through puberty and hitting, like, 12, 13.

I remember after 9/11, I started - I was working quite a bit in Vancouver. And then I realized I would go to catch my flight, and it would take me like 20 minutes to get cleared to fly, like, every time. I'm like, what is going on?

I got into [acting] so late because of sports. And then when I was in grad school, I sort of got lulled into basically forgetting I was black, in - meaning that everyone you play at a conservatory, 95 percent of the characters are non-black.

When we kind of get caught up in the minutiae, the details that make us all different, I think there's two ways of seeing that. There's an opportunity to see the texture of that person, the characteristics that make them unique. And then there's an opportunity to go to war about it and to say that that person is different from me and I don't like you, so let's battle.

You are an American, so you're hurt that other American citizens have been hurt, but you end up having to shoulder the shame for something that you don't even believe. There's a lot of years where Muslims have dealt with having to make themselves very small and not disrupt the flow and not - make sure that you're not noticed because, you know, deep down inside people are not really excited that you're around .

My parents were kids when I was born. My mother was 16. My father was 17, and they got married in high school. And they split a few years later. When they split was when all that was happening also, and he - they were just coming into themselves. But they remained friends.

At the end of the day we're all spirits having a physical experience. That really comes from my relationship with Islam because it just makes me really conscious of my action.