Pac said Thug Life stood for 'The Hate U Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody'.
One of my biggest influences as a writer is J. K. Rowling. I grew up with Harry Potter. One thing I absolutely loved was how every single person in Harry's world was so three-dimensional—it was as if each one was the main character in his or her own story and was just making a guest appearance in Harry's story. I strive to do that as a writer. I want every side character to be the main character of his or her own story.
Pendant que certains et certaines parmi nous ont peur de l'impact que des chansons pourraient avoir sur nos enfants, d'autres parents sont terrifiés à l'idée que ceux et celles qui sont censés protéger leurs enfants pourrait leur faire du mal.
Les au revoir font encore plus de mal quand l'autre est déjà parti.
Tu peux très bien être courageuse et avoir peur quand même, Starr, dit-elle. Etre courageuse, ça veut dire ne pas se laisser abattre par sa peur. Et c'est ce que tu fais.
I look at the stars again. Daddy says he named me Starr because I was his light in the darkness. I need some light in my own darkness right about now.
Khalil, I'll never forget. I'll never give up. I'll never be quiet. I promise.
I look at books as being a form of activism. Sometimes they'll show us a side of the world that we might not have known about.
Especially for young POC, when we enter majority-white spaces, we feel the need to assimilate, to blend in, to prove ourselves. I don't think we discuss it enough.
My maternal grandmother was a star on her high school basketball team in small-town Mississippi.
When I was a kid, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer was easy - the next Lisa Leslie.
Michael Brown - when he lost his life, there was more focus on what he had done sometimes than what was done to him.
I wanted to write a book like a rapper would write it - I didn't want to hold back. Rappers catch a lot of slack; I'm not going to be cursing up a storm, but when I look at Nas... his first album is one of my favorites. I want to tell stories like that.
When you say, 'Southern,' or you speak about a southern accent, there's always that drawl, and usually from white people. That's what people associate with the South. But we're all different. The black southern accent is different.
A lot of people involved in the Black Lives Matter movement are actually sticking up for those other lives. They are turning out for their Muslim brothers and sisters who are now being targeted.
At the time when I was in college, Oscar Grant had just lost his life in Oakland, Calif. He was an unarmed young black male who had a record. And at the time when his death was making headlines, more people were talking about what he had done in his past than the fact that he unjustly lost his life.
As a black woman, I feel like I have a unique experience that we don't often see in media portrayals of the South.
When I was in college, I lived in a mostly black, poor neighborhood. That's where I grew up, but I attended a mostly white upper-class school in conservative Mississippi. I was often very aware of how I presented myself.
