Jesmyn Ward Quotes

As a writer, I was shaped by a desire to write for black people. That things were not being represented. That was my motivating force. That it has become what it has become is shocking to me. I just wanted to be able to take care of my kids.

The first black girl book I fell in love with was most likely 'Please, Puppy, Please' by Spike Lee and Tonya Lee.

No one can write like Vallejo and not sound like a fraud. He's just too much himself and not you.

I write for young girls of color, for girls who don't even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.

Everything starts with writing. I heard Nikki Giovanni and was blown away. I just thought 'wow'; she was writing from a black girl's perspective, and the imagery was so vivid that I started doing spoken word.

The most important part of fashion photography, for me, is not the models; it's not the clothes. It's that you are responsible for defining what a woman today is. That, I think, is my job.

A novel I read when I was about 17 or 18 - 'The World According to Garp,' by John Irving - really made me want to become a writer. The character of Garp is a novelist, and at the time, the whole lifestyle of being a writer was hugely appealing to me.

Somehow, I realized I could write books about black characters who reflected my own experiences or otherworldly experiences - not just stories of history, poverty and oppression.

William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.

I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else.

I've always felt a bit of an outsider. It used to worry me that, in terms of TV, I did not look like 'the girlfriend' or 'the daughter'. That pushed me to write my own stuff, as I thought no one else was going to write me a lead in the sitcom.

I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days... I said, 'If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.'

I feel empowered to be a different kind of writer. The longer I stay here, the more light filters into my work. I feel very American. I belong.

It wasn't until I started to read short stories - by people like Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, John Updike... Eudora Welty - that I became excited about the possibilities of writing.

I just want to be fully challenged as an artist, so that anyone who looks like me, who relates to me, says, 'Oh, if Danielle did it, I can.'

I never want kids to walk away after a school presentation and say, 'I met a writer today.' I want them to say, 'I am a writer.'

I have always been a fan of Salvador Dali, but Amrita Sher-Gil, who was an Indian-Hungarian painter, is another favourite. She was painting Indian women, and, growing up here, I'd never seen anyone paint Indian women, so that was really incredible to see a painting of someone who looks like you. I think that has a lot of impact on you.

When I was younger, I didn't have that type of person that I could look up to and be like, 'OK, this is someone who dresses like me and I relate to.' I didn't have that growing up, so to give that opportunity to a younger generation of women - and not just Somali women, but anyone who feels different - that means a lot to me.

'Essence' is political. I grew up on the magazine, looking at the covers. Seeing ourselves on the cover is political.

I loved her music and the fact that she was a classically trained pianist and that her voice was so unique, but what made Nina Simone my hero is that I had never seen anyone in the public eye who looked anything like me at all, ever.

It was the desire to see black girls and our experiences in the books that I was given to read at school that forced me to speak my truth. I launched #1000BlackGirlBooks, a book drive to collect the stories of women of color.

I started writing stories at a young age, but not once did it occur to me that I could grow up to be a writer. Who could I look to? My favorite authors were Ann M. Martin and E.L. Konigsburg and Judy Blume, Beverly Cleary and Lois Lowry and Norma Klein. They were all white women, and they seemed so stately to me, so elegant. A whole world away.

When I was a youth, to be called 'African' was a diss. At school, the African kids used to lie and say they were Jamaican. So when I first came in the game, and I'm saying lyrics like, 'I make Nigerians proud of their tribal scars/ My bars make you push up your chest like bras,' that was a big deal for me.

I am proud to be able to exhibit my work and inspire young people. Especially young black women so they know that they are beautiful, that they don't have to hold onto any negative stereotypes.