Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm looking through old things of mine, and there was this binder from when I was 14 years old. It is essentially a dream board. It is a school binder that I had put magazine clippings on. It said, 'TV actress, fame, a picture of Halle Berry, a picture of Christina Aguilera.' I was obsessed with both of them.
I went to this arts high school in Greenville, S.C. In speech class, the teacher, a white man, would say, 'You're talking ghetto. Don't talk ghetto.' I'm not only offended, but I'm confused because while there's nothing wrong with people who come from the projects or the ghetto, that's actually not my experience.
Why aren't there films being made that tell ethnically diverse stories? Or why is it so impossible to allow a person of color to add their texture and their essence to a role that is not ethnically specific? I don't know why it's a novel or risky idea to consider making a film look like how our world actually looks today.
I had been getting relaxers since I was eight or nine. I had no clue. It was a personal mission to really find out who am when I'm not altering myself to look like anybody else. Who am I when I wake up and I don't do anything to my hair? Who is that woman? I want to meet her. And that was what catapulted my journey into going natural.
When I looked at 'Dear White People,' you have four African-American students who are all very different and who are trying to figure out who they are. They're dealing with identity issues and crises. That is exciting to me, to see African-American young people on a page, on a screen, who are so diverse and whose stories are all so different.