I try to convey what it feels like and sounds like and smells like and looks like inside of my particular skin, to move through the world as a black American woman in her mid-twenties.

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.

I've been thinking a lot about folks denying what has happened in history, or just not acknowledging it.

I think often if people don't have a lot of experience with a particular type of person or a particular type of brain, they can make dangerous assumptions. That's one of the reasons that I'm so interested in contradicting and troubling held thoughts about black women.

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."

I guess the only thing I'd say is it ['There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?'] shouldn't be read as "Beyoncé is not beautiful."

I think there's something that's fascist [in Donald Trump's election], and something that I think we could probably learn from, in terms of the energy in the world right now.