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 wanted [the book 'There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?'] to be colorful. I wanted it to be evocative. I wanted a figure of a black woman that the reader has to confront.

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.

In my experience when I do try to avoid something, it makes its way into the work anyway. To be in front of it and just make friends with it is easier for me.

I don't think that there are as many black women or women of color becoming psychiatrists, so we can't find them and then we feel looked at and studied and that's part of what is damaging to us. It's hard to find therapy that is actually a tool for your own liberation. I think we can be really distrustful.

Аrt movements are always linked to some kind of turmoil.

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