Tess Gerritsen Quotes

The truth of the matter is, I am a black woman, and I am an actor. I don't try to get caught up in being a black actor; I'm just an actor who is a black woman. It's not about forgetting that you're black, but you don't need to be hammered over the head, either; it just is what it is.

In Australia, there just weren't strong roles for actors of colour. I was often being asked to turn up for commercials with a ghetto blaster on my shoulder. I thought, 'Are we in the '60s?'

When I first came out to L.A., Hollywood's idea of a Latina was Mexican. It was almost like they had never seen or heard of an Afro-Latina before.

I'm black and white, so either, sometimes, you're not considered by the breakdown of the script: you're not 'black enough' for this role. Or you're not 'white enough' for this role. Or, like, looking up to people, who do I identify with? And not seeing Barbies that maybe look like me.

I know I'm a black actor, but really, I'm an actor who happens to be black.

For me, whenever I would see a lot of 'black films,' I didn't feel represented in it. I didn't feel connected to the characters or the situations or the humor.

I grew up under the politics of my size and my skin. I grew up under the politics of the sound of my voice and a lack of agency, or a feeling of a lack of agency, and not always being able to find myself in images that were in the media.

Literature has been a treacherous site for black Americans because literary production has been so tied with the project of proving our humanity through the act of writing.

I was a mixed black girl existing in a westernized Hawaiian culture where petite Asian women were the ideal, in a white culture where black women were furthest from the standard of beauty, in an American culture where trans women of color were invisible.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong.

My views on equality are pretty obvious. I mean, I did play a highly complex lesbian techno DJ on TV, but I know it's not always easy to come out and tell the world where you stand.

I have a theory. An audience doesn't need to get wrapped up in blackness every time they see a Negro actor. And a movie doesn't have to be about race just because there's a Negro in it.

If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?

When you're told that as a filmmaker of colour, the stories you want to tell aren't commercial enough, then you start thinking, 'I'm going to tell them anyway.'

Every year, Hollywood is looking for that new, white leading man and new white starlet that audiences fall in love with. But they're not looking for the next Denzel Washington, Will Smith or Sidney Poitier.

I believe black characters in fiction are still revolutionary, given our long history of erasure.

There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface to play Othello. You shouldn't have a white actor in what amounts to yellowface to play Asian.

I am performing this role of the artist and this role of the 'negress' coming into a white-box institution. It's kind of a self-appointed role: the self-designated negress.

I don't see myself as a 'black actor,' I'm just Shemar Moore the actor.

I don't understand labels. I don't need anybody to tell me I'm Latina or black or anything else. I've played characters that were written for Caucasian females, I just want to be given the same consideration as everybody else, and so far that has been happening.

My work has always been controversial within certain segments of the Asian-American community. This is a community that is generally not represented well at all on the stage, in the media, etc. So on those few occasions when something comes along, everybody feels obligated to make sure that it represents his own point of view.

African-Americans are always forced to learn the other culture, but the other culture is not forced to learn ours. I went to acting school at Juilliard, and we learned Shakespeare and Shaw, but we never did the work of a single African-American playwright, not August Wilson or Ntozake Shange or Imir Baraka.

There is a certain danger in thinking about diversity in its own little box, as something that is somehow separate from 'normal' comic books and comics creators.

There's always been a quiet conversation and joke that if you're not hard, if you're not from impoverished neighborhoods, if you're not certain constructs of a black stereotype, then you not black.

I never consider myself a minority. I see people who look like me in Barbados, in Trinidad, in Haiti, in London, and in Brooklyn. So I don't know what the heck anyone means when they call me a 'minority.' There's something about that word to me. It just minimalizes people.