I’m a black woman who is from Central Falls, Rhode Island. I’m dark skinned. I’m quirky. I’m shy. I’m strong. I’m guarded. I’m weak at times. I’m sensual. I’m not overtly sexual. I am so many things in so many ways and I will never see myself on screen. And the reason I will never see myself up on screen is because that does not translate with being black.

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They say, 'To serve is to love,' and I think to serve is to heal, too.

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Creativity only resonates if you infuse real life into the work.

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Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.

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The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity.

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All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.

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There's not one woman in America who does not care about her hair, but we give it way too much value. We deprive ourselves of things, we use it to destroy each other, we'll look at a child and judge a mother and her sense of motherhood by the way the child's hair looks. I am not going to traumatize my child about her hair. I want her to love her hair.

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Each role has its own different challenges.

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Self-deprecation is not an answer to keeping one's balance. I think that it's very damaging.

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You have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it. When you're really passionate, you're going to grab hold of every rope you see, and wrap them around your arms and legs to claw your way out. And that's the way I've felt in my life.

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