Sometimes it's just rejecting stereotypes, sometimes it's creating work. Sometimes it's just blocking out the noise.

We kind of have to rewrite our own stories and our own ways of being free.

It's always hard for me to find a therapist who is a black woman or even a woman of color. It's something that we've always been told is not for us. It's top down.

Where I would usually backspace, I stop and say, "You know what? This is important, that I say how I feel and don't sugarcoat it, and don't avoid it."

It's hard for black women to ask for help. We think we don't need it. We're used to being in pain and living with it.

After a while, being so honest and so vulnerable on the page ends up affecting my own kind of self possession in the world, because I am not afraid of myself and my own thoughts. I think so much of being a woman, of being a social being, of being polite, is quieting those thoughts. There's so much we try not to say as we go through the day. There's a lot of tempering and self-editing. It is a relief to make writing that space where I don't need to do that.

The book [There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?] is quite complex, and I was worried that it would be marketed as one-sided or flat, and I knew that Mickalene's [Tomas] work would be able to encompass all the many states of being that are in the book.