A church is an incubator, a nursery, a grade school. You start where people are and move them to where they need to be.
I did a little film called 'Nina,' a small role. I played a French girl who was a nurse to Nina Simone. Zoe Saldana plays Nina.
My mother read nursery rhymes to me, and my grandmother told me folk stories, but as a child I had no interest in writing whatsoever.
When I was in the hospital they gave me apple juice every morning, even after I told them I didn't like it. I had to get even. One morning, I poured the apple juice into the specimen tube. The nurse held it up and said, 'It's a little cloudy.' I took the tube from her and said, 'Let me run it through again,' and drank it. The nurse fainted.
When healthcare is at its best, hospitals are four-star hotels, and nurses, personal butlers at the ready - at least, that's how many hospitals seem to interpret a government mandate.
A Health Affairs study comparing patient-satisfaction scores with HCAHPS surveys of almost 100,000 nurses showed that a better nurse work environment was associated with higher scores on every patient-satisfaction survey question.
The expectation was I would get married and become a mother and settle down. We didn't have any role models. We saw teachers and doctors and nurses, but I'm not a teacher, and there was no possibility of being a doctor or a nurse. I had to work and find my own way.
I tend to play nurses and waitresses and policewomen.
I do quite a lot of art, with a small 'a'. I guess that is how I was dredged up, with paints and crayons. Even when I was at nursery, I knew instinctively how to mix colours, how to make purple or orange.
My father, who was illiterate, smoothed iron for Ford Dagenham and we'd get up at 5;30 A.M. to give him a jump-start. My mother was a nurse and part of the Windrush generation. Growing up in east London, we were financially poor, but rich in hope and dignity, and we were happy.
