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.

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

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.

I'm working on a young adult novel. I've been working on it for a while, because I don't know how to write a novel and I'm teaching myself. For that reason, I've been reading a lot of YA [young adults], which I never have before. It's totally new to me.

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?"

There's something about us using the word fascism and thinking about, "What is it? What does it mean, and what are the tenets of it?" I've been thinking a lot about folks denying what has happened in history, or just not acknowledging it. I think there's something that's fascist, and something that I think we could probably learn from, in terms of the energy in the world right now.

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