It's been interesting to look back on those works [I've done previously] and see all the things that Beyoncé has done and become for us in the meantime, because back then, folks were like, "Why Beyoncé? I don't get why she is kind of the symbol for black womanhood."

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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?".