I'm not reading any kind of fantasy [for young adults] or Hunger Games or anything like that. It's more just like geeks with crushes. It's very sweet, and I'm enjoying how honest they are, and I'm enjoying the humanity in them.

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 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.

I also think that [political turmoil] gives artists something, a way of kind of processing.

Art movements are always linked to some kind of turmoil. We can look at history and see that [political turmoil is] fertile ground for art. I also think that it gives artists something, a way of kind of processing. My friends and I have all been super motivated to work and to do the work that we need to and want to and think should be in the world. Hard times are really a fire under your ass to prioritize and think, "Okay, how can I challenge myself to put something in the world that wasn't there that can reach other folks and help them to process"?

I really hope that people feel permission to talk about their own troubles, but also to celebrate themselves.

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