Suzan-Lori Parks Quotes

I think with 'Hamilton,' Lin-Manuel has really blown up the whole casting idea. It's miraculous. You look at '1776,' it's a bunch of old white guys and old white chicks. You look at 'Hamilton,' and it's just the faces of America.

I was making big paintings with mythological themes. When I started painting black figures, the white professors were relieved, and the black students were like, 'She's on our side.' These are the kinds of issues that a white male artist just doesn't have to deal with.

Creating whole departments of ethnic, gender, and other 'studies' was part of the price of academic peace. All too often, these 'studies' are about propaganda rather than serious education.

I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up.

When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.

As an Italian-American, I have a special responsibility to be sensitive to ethnic stereotypes.

Personally, it's a comfort and happiness to know that my work is taken seriously and is not marginalised and put in a box of ethnic immigrant writing in America.

I love writing for other actors, women of African descent and people who are generally underrepresented.

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.

I decided blacks should not have to experience the difficulties I had faced, so I decided to open a flying school and teach other black women to fly.

The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time.

We don't want to create a literary ghetto in which black writers are only allowed to write black characters and women writers are put on 'girl books.'

When I say there should not be a BET channel or a Black History Month, I'm saying we deserve more. I just hope people understand that I'm not judging; I'm coming from experience.

As a woman of color, slowly and with some coercing, the not-for-profit theaters around the country are beginning to recognize and embrace the power of our stories, but with regards to Broadway and other commercial venues, we remain very much marginalized and excluded from that larger creative conversation.

People look to 'Dear White People' as an encyclopedia of our culture. But it's also art, and there are characters with different perspectives.

My goal is to broaden and deepen the range of African-American characters on television, so I always try to show human beings.

The Latinas in this industry are really supportive and stick together. America Ferrera, Gina Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana, and Salma Hayek have all reached out and have helped promote 'Vida,' and it's because they get it. They really are about opening doors. The more there are of us, the more of a movement it will be, and it won't be just tokens.

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

Asian-Americans are fighting for space and fighting for visibility and for acceptance.

There's so much talk of representation in politics and entertainment - it's everywhere - but I didn't realize representation was important until really my senior year of high school.

'Hamilton' just asks us all to go a little bit deeper: whether you're a hip-hop fan seeing musical theater for the first time, or if you were thinking you were gonna see some reprise of 1776, and now it's this? And you're thinking, 'Wait a minute, these people aren't white!' It asks you just take a step and go a little deeper.

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.

When folks say 'identity politics' don't matter, it simply reinforces the norm of a white, middle-class, cis narrative and further marginalizes the rest of us who don't share that identity.

I'm very optimistic about the future, because... Okay, with Audra McDonald, even just on Broadway, they cast her in shows that are usually not played by African-American women, so she's very inspiring to me just because of that, you know what I mean?

There still aren't many black women on prime-time TV. Times are changing, but it's interesting: we're in 2013 and still experiencing firsts... Hopefully, in the next 100 years, things will balance even more.