A Quote by Claressa Shields

Growing up in Flint, Michigan, I saw so many kids from my school end up in jail or unemployed, and gangs would hang out and cause trouble in my neighborhood. I had to learn how to protect myself, because it didn't feel like anyone else was protecting me.
I'm nice because, when I was growing up, so many people weren't nice to me, and I remember how that felt. And I don't want to make anyone else feel like that. I value nice.
I grew up when people were afraid to 'come out' as gay. If you asked me how many gay kids I grew up with or went to school with, I would have said none - which of course could not have been true. The truth is I have no idea how many confused and frightened kids I grew up with. They are still out there.
I went to public school my whole life, graduated high school with my class. Growing up, I’d go to an audition, my friends would go to soccer practice and we’d all reconvene and hang out in our neighborhood. When I would book something, I would never tell my friends. Acting was just fun. I was a kid, I wasn’t jaded.
I went to public school my whole life, graduated high school with my class. Growing up, I'd go to an audition, my friends would go to soccer practice and we'd all reconvene and hang out in our neighborhood. When I would book something, I would never tell my friends. Acting was just fun. I was a kid, I wasn't jaded.
Growing up, I had trouble finding clothes because I was curvy, and so I would end up designing my own things.
Capitalism would have never let me be a filmmaker, living in Flint, Michigan with a high school education. I was going to have to make that happen myself.
You really had to learn to protect yourself from all Gooks in Vietnam, or else you would end up dead.
I saw so many crazy things growing up. I've seen friends go to jail and come out, and now they're thriving. So it's made me really resilient.
I grew up in Michigan and - where to start? I mean, my dad was a doctor who worked at a jail. He was more like a jail administrator. My mom was a public school teacher. There's no artists in my family whatsoever.
My friend and I were up to all sorts of shenanigans at school. But one time it ended up disrupting the whole class and we got in trouble. His parents told him he wasn't allowed to hang out with me any more. I had a friendship break-up in third grade. It was brutal.
I would point out that I'm an actress for a reason! If I were popular in high school, I would have considered another career because I wouldn't have been alone in my room, making up other characters for myself. I definitely had growing pains. The popular kids didn't want anything to do with the girl who was starting the drama club.
When I think back, I felt like I had the life that a lot of white American kids grew up with in the suburbs in the States. I started noticing, as Apartheid's grip weakened, that we had more and more black kids at school; I had more and more black friends. But I never really saw a separation between myself and the black kids at school.
Well to me growing, up I've had my own psychological war with my parents dying at such a young age. My mother was killed by a drunk driver, then two months later my father drowned. He was out with his friends drinking and on medication for depression, and he didn't come out of the water alive. Growing up with sexual abuse and having to be in gangs and dealing with my own trauma; finding the cultural identity when I was 16, and learning those traditional ways saved me from hurting myself.
I like breakfast food - like three pancakes, bacon, eggs, and a smoothie. Growing up, I would be up all night and had trouble getting up. So my mom started making me a smoothie as a treat if I woke up at a certain time.
As a kid growing up in public housing, I didn't always get show up at the first day of school with a new backpack full of supplies. Having the school supplies I needed would have made me feel more prepared and ready to learn.
As a black woman I always felt growing up I had to do above and beyond stuff to be noticed, to feel like I could hang with everybody else.
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