'To Kill a Mockingbird' wasn't about me.
I've been told what I can't do my whole life.
People always say time heals. Time doesn't necessarily heal anything. It allows you to manage things. There are occasions where you feel the pain as if it just happened, but you know that it's a fleeting moment.
There are so many things I want to do, so many things I have to say.
Grief is like mending a knee. You can mend the knee and make it function, but the knee never actually heals.
Poetry has the ability to create entire moments with just a few choice words. The spacing and line breaks create rhythm, a helpful musicality, a natural flow. The separate stanzas aid in perpetuating a kind of incremental reading, one small chunk at a time.
I have a chip on my shoulder I pet every morning, a constant feeling like I have something to prove. Hearing that the canon can't be diversified, there's no room for more brown faces - that fueled my fire.
Rappers are the white authors of our generation. They know me, my language, my codes, my family, my block.
Rap music was and is, for me, everything.
Boston is pretty infamous for race relations.
The stories of kids who grew up in communities like mine weren't being written about in many books for kids.
I wanted to be Langston Hughes.
I grew up around a whole bunch of girls, and one thing I realized is what they had on their plate was very different than what I had on mine. The things girls are made to be responsible for is a heavy burden - take care of your younger siblings, do good in school, have some extracurriculars. The pressure is intense.
Rap music was a savior to me.
It's naive of adults to believe that young people aren't aware of what is going on in the world. The best thing we can do is confront that to help them navigate it. We can help them say, 'These things are happening. What does that mean for your life?'
The feeling of self-discovery, for me, is perennial.
I write every single day.
If a kid is reading a book about someone who looks like them but doesn't talk like them, we stunt their growth by dissing them.
I am a consummate metaphor addict.
Rappers were my storytellers.
