From the moment I could express myself, I acted like a stereotypical girl and insisted that I was a girl. I wasn't just a boy who liked girly things - I knew I was a girl.
I grew up hearing, 'You're pretty for a black girl,' 'You speak well for a black girl...' I was really bookish. I was reading all of the time. I had big glasses.
I get offered: 'Here's a girl who's mad at another girl for having a wedding on the same day.' That'll be a big hit, but I don't want to do that.
My first reaction to being pigeonholed or pushed into certain confines is to be like, 'No, I'm the opposite,' you know? Like, don't put me in a stereotypical black-girl category, because I'm not like that; I'm doing this thing over here.
I would love 'Awkward Black Girl' to be on television, with the right team of people who understand and get it. If 'Awkward Black Girl' could make it to HBO starring a dark-skinned black girl, that would be revolutionary.
I've always been 'other' in all the spaces that I've been in. Even when I first moved to America, just the idea that I was a dark-skinned black girl from England with an accent. It's one thing to be a black girl, but it's another to be a dark black girl. I was chastised for that. I was chastised for the way I spoke.
Do mainstream crowds want to watch a movie about good things happening in black neighborhoods? Do black audiences want to see a little girl doing something in a white world?
We were so fed up with how we had to be the stereotypical girl who looks perfect in the music video: she's coming out of the water in a bikini with her long tan legs. Not all of us are that girl.
I'm not the stereotypical blonde vixen girl but rather the blonde freckled girl from Kentucky.
I read this book when I was young. It's about a black girl growing up in Heaven, Ohio. The cover has a black girl with clouds behind her. It was the first book cover I ever saw with a girl that looked like me.
No matter how cutting-edge Hollywood may seem, it is still delayed in how it views people: If producers do not perceive me as an Iranian girl, then I cannot play an Iranian girl. If you aren't perceived as a full black girl, then it makes it more difficult to play a black girl on TV.
I don't think it's different to be a black girl in England than it is to be a black girl from America. We all collectively share in a pain of displacement and not feeling like we quite belong in places.
I've always been able to write rhymes and that would be like when you consult with your girl. When I'm mad and s - t like that I would throw headphones on and close my room door, when I'm mad I just close the door with my girl and f - k her. In so many different ways hip-hop has been like my girl and it's always been there to hold me down.
I have no desire to be hip to the latest black slang and do the stereotypical black thing. I was a Richard Pryor fan, and I have used profanity in my act. But when it becomes a whole thing that defines blacks, we're limiting ourselves. The enemy is us.
My perfect girl would be pretty mad, but one you can have a conversation with. No one can be too mad for me, the madder the better. I love a crazy chick!
The only people for me are the mad ones: the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who... burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles.