MNEK Quotes

It's important to be able to have representation for black queer women, because I feel like there's not much representation for them in the mainstream.

It's not enough even to have one black Barbie... because black women are not a monolith.

I grew up watching cinema in my country that wasn't telling stories about us, and we had to find a way to connect, and our references, our role models had nothing to do with us. And I'm so glad that it's changing.

I think there is much more queer visibility than there was when I was a kid. There is marriage, more trans visibility, and many more celebrities who are open about the sexuality. This was so not the case when I was a kid.

If you're writing a bi character, did you look at a lot of bi actors for the role? Did you really go and find people that identified as queer? If you did, then great, and if you didn't find anyone you liked in that pool, well, that's surprising. If you write a character that's trans, the time is now - cast a trans actor.

There was a criticism of 'Milk' that I found truth in, which was that it was focused on gay white men.

I probably haven't had enough gay characters in my stuff. When you're writing something, you're thinking, 'Why couldn't this person be black, white, gay?'

The industry has always been accepting of gay artists, but a particular thing for me is to see gay artists of color.

I hope we see more avenues for representation. More TV shows and films starring queer people, especially QPOC and nonbinary folks, more mainstream press coverage of our artwork and fashion, and more representation of our interests within politics.

I'm proud to carry that torch and be like, 'I'm gay! I'm black! Hang your dreams on me. Hang your hopes on me. I'll carry them to the best of my ability.'

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

I'm interested in Native American and African American stories, and LGBTQ stories and stories of persons of mixed heritage. These are the stories I want to see onscreen and on the pages.

In some ways, I value specificity. I think that there's power in, once you know who your fan base is, being able to speak to them. I hope to cultivate a fan base of black girls and black people and people of color, women of color, queer people, people who are are marginalized in general.

I make pop music. I make music that is pretty commercial. But, at the same time, I'm a minority within a minority and it can be challenging. I feel validated about what I'm doing when I meet fellow black gay men or black gay women.

It may be that a majority of superheroes are white males. But that's because they used to all be white males, except for Wonder Woman and Black Canary and maybe one or two others. Now there are Spanish, Puerto Rican comic book superheroes, black superheroes, and women superheroes.

The fact that I'm able to portray these complex, fully realized, queer Asian characters? I never thought it would be in this position. You just never see those types of characters and that type of representation.

I always was missing that female brown queer perspective, and I think in 'Vida' we have that. A lot of things I wanted to touch on and deal with, I get to do here.

I think the earnestness of what we're saying and what other bands like us are totally saying - or other queer bands - is 'We exist.'

If you never, or rarely, see your experience depicted in art or pop culture then you can begin to feel isolated or separate; Othered. So, representation is super important.

The more queer characters I play over my years of working as an actor, and the more I see other young artists stepping up with the same intention I have, to make space for the voices of a generation of people who may not fit the status-quo, the more it inspires me to keep going.

As a gay black man, it's important to me to show up - that I'm able to show up as my whole self, in every space that I'm in, because that's how I'm able to be the most true to who I am.

I would definitely love to see a queer rom-com because representation matters. It does so much to help normalize things in the mind of society.

I think 'Pose' is really a groundbreaking television show because we're telling stories about family and love through people that society has always believed were incapable of having that or being a part of that.

I don't think there's been many chances for people to see a black, gay, pop experience and that's what I want to have with my shows moving forward.

Why can't I make up my own characters and paint the people I want to see in the world? I'm depicting the many people who existed in history but whose presence was never documented.