Dee Rees Quotes

I knew what it was like growing up in a world where I never saw myself in anything.

I didn't see a lot of women who looked like me on TV when I was growing up.

It's hard as a young person of a different ethnicity or background to look at the TV and not see anyone who looks like you. Representation is very important.

I'm not into the Oscar and Emmys as much as I used to be because I'm tired of looking at people who don't look like me.

We want the diversity of the world that is around us represented both in front of and behind the camera, and on our screens as a result.

Growing up, I never saw any Asian faces on TV, so it didn't feel like a viable option.

Let me speak for myself: I think I wanted to see people who looked like me on TV. I wanted to see people who had similar experiences as I had, growing up. There was nobody on television when I was a teenager who I could relate to.

I didn't have a hero playing in sports that looked like me.

Representation is necessary, and we all want to turn on the TV and see characters who look like us and represent us in some way.

I feel bad for my little cousins who don't see themselves being represented, or the little girls in my community who won't have a chance to see a Disney princess... who resembles them.

I was seeing people of color growing up in my media. I was seeing them in positions of power.

I want to represent Asian women.

For those of you who are underrepresented in technology, know that you've always been here. Look in photos and see yourself reflecting back.

For me, I want to see diversity in storytelling sources because we live in a very diverse society, and the stories are for the whole society. That's really important. For me, as a female filmmaker, when I was out on the festival circuit on 2006, I felt like such a freaking anomaly - an oddity.

There aren't as many roles for people who look like me, and it was always complicated when it came to casting my parents. But now I couldn't be more grateful that I have a different look.

When I was a kid, it wasn't very often that I could go to the movies and see an entire movie carried on the shoulders of someone who looked like me.

I know one of the reasons I first started making Youtube videos was because no one looks like me.

I feel like elements of race and identity and ethnicity are sort of missing in all of literature, not just in women's literature.

We all know the power of film; we all know there's almost nothing more powerful than to see people on film that look and talk like you, like we do.

Through my fiction, I make mainstream readers see the new Americans as complex human beings, not as just 'The Other.'

I'm really passionate about representation in film. I feel like the world is dominated by such a small group of human beings. There are so many different kinds of people that aren't represented, that don't have characters who look like them.

When I was in school, you never saw anyone who looked like us that was on TV. And that was really weird for me because there's so many people of South Asian descent in America - in the world.

I want women and girls of African descent and of color to be able to not have to keep searching for stories about themselves.

It is shocking that the screen does not reflect the way the world is and the diversity in the world... What the world really looks like should be on screen, and it isn't.

Growing up, I remember watching TV, and I didn't see a lot of people who looked like me, especially someone who passed as a glamorous model on a mainstream TV show.