She was born Sarah Breedlove on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana, where her parents had been slaves. At 14, she married to get a home of her own, to get away from a cruel brother-in-law with whom she was living. At 17, she had her only child, A'Lelia, who I'm named after.
There was a period of 10 years where the conventional wisdom was Black shows don't sell overseas, therefore nobody is interested.
It's very hard to be a kid, especially in a predominantly white school or white town where other people want to police your body and hair.
It takes a long time, I think, to get to the place where you realize you may love the hairstyle that somebody else has.
I have lived almost seven decades. So I've had my hair journey where I wasn't comfortable with my hair.
We live in a culture where European beauty standards are dominant.
No 13-year-old or over should ever be seen in trousers that finish above the ankle. It doesn't matter how good your legs are, or if you're on a beach in Bermuda where they invented the things.
London is a city of ghosts; you feel them here. Not just of people, but eras. The ghost of empire, or the blitz, the plague, the smoky ghost of the Great Fire that gave us Christopher Wren's churches and ushered in the Georgian city.
I don't know if English is the only language where some expressions only and solely mean the opposite of what they say but we do have an awful lot of them.
Texting isn't writing. It's not like letter writing. Texting is short scriptwriting. It's a collaborative soap opera where nothing happens.
