Janelle Monae Quotes

I am not a Somali representative. I am not a Muslim representative. I am not a millennial representative. I am not a woman representative. I am a representative who happens to have all of these marginalized identities and can understand the intersectionality of all of them in a very unique way.

I want all types of people to look at my work and see themselves, just like I watch a Reese Witherspoon movie as a black woman and can empathize with her because we have had to internalize whiteness in that way to survive.

I've had lots of people say, 'Oh, Franchesca's content is just for white people.' But I try to talk about identity in a way that's accessible to lots of people and is not a pointed finger.

Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with the 'demonized' so that the demonizing will stop; it stands with the 'disposable' so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.

Identity politics are wearisome; you don't want to go on speaking for any one group as a writer.

This idea of feminism as a party to which only a select few people get to come - this is why so many women, particularly women of colour, feel alienated from mainstream western academic feminism. Because don't we want it to be mainstream?

In Hollywood, there is one dominant voice. It is a white, male, straight gaze. When I talk about positive portrayals of black people and women, I'm saying complexity. I'm not saying goody-two-shoes, everything's okay. No. The positive view of me is to see me as I am: the 'good,' the 'bad,' the gray. That is a positive portrayal.

I'm definitely drawn to stories about outsiders. Feeling like that myself as a gay black man, I often seek to give a voice to those in the world who don't have one.

I don't like laughing at people unless they're in a privileged position or if they're in authority. If it's poor people or people who live on the outskirts or on the margins, or the underdog, I'd rather be laughing with them.

The people that are the invisible ones, the marginalized, the quote-unquote weirdos, the people that get things thrown at them, the people that get harassed every day just for existing . . . I just still strongly align with them.

Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian. Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community. Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black. There is no hierarchy of oppression.

Because if you weren't born white, you were forced to see differences; or if you weren't born what they called normal, or if you got injured, then you were left to explore the world of the different.

I have a lot of friends who are in mixed race relationships who are gay. But I think that the reason it bothers people is because there is not enough representation, even in the straight world, of people loving people who look like them.

I feel like as a whole, when it comes to the "other" in the US - whatever that looks like for each individual person, whether it be someone who's LGBTQ or someone of color or someone who's just a religion that they've never heard of - whether you're in entertainment or whether you're in any other business, we're not as evolved as we'd like to think.

Our politics at its best involves us recognizing ourselves in each other. And our politics at its worst are when we see immigrants or women or blacks or gays or Mexicans as somehow separate, apart from us.

I think one of the most important things we can do as feminists is acknowledge that, even though we have womanhood in common, we have to start to think about the ways in which we're different, how those differences affect us, and what kinds of needs we have based on our differences.

It's always good to be around people who get it and understand because it's a huge difference working on a black set. I can walk on a black set and not have to worry about my hair because they know.

I refuse to do shows that are narrowly constructed, that appeal to only one sentiment. I do a lot of Jewish material in front of non-Jews and a lot of non-Jewish material in front of Jews on the simple theory that the non-Jews are entitled to a glimpse of a Jewish world and the Jews are entitled to a glimpse of the world.

I'm trying to appeal to the disenfranchised everybody, not just specifically gay.

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.

Who included me among the ranks of the human race?

Otherness is a big thing for me. I'm always drawn to characters that live lives that I couldn't lead.

I believe we need more culturally diverse books - about disabled characters, though not about their disability, about people with different sexual orientations, or a boy who is a cross-dresser. We need to reflect the diversity of our society.

If we truly seek diversity in fiction, we have to let the needs of others come before our need to define ourselves as social justice allies.

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?