Everything has been said but not everyone has yet said it.
The problem with Muslim women is less that we cannot speak the language, but that no one listens to us.
My story is one of millions, and the others aren't often told.
I don't feel drawn to lightness, I need something more. I feel that - oh, I hate saying this, it sounds so wanky - but I feel a real urge to give voices to people we don't usually hear from in real life.
The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.
When '12 Years a Slave' got that much attention, everyone started to copy that. That story has to be told, but there are a lot more stories to be told than slavery.
There are stories I'd like to tell, I'd like to see, and they're not getting made. These stories are beyond the experience of the people in power. They don't understand it, so they're frightened of it.
Those in power write the history; those who suffer write the songs.
History is written by the winners. My job as an artist is to speak up for those who might be perceived as the losers. Or those who can't shout.
I'm always drawn to stories that people don't know about, particularly when they're inside of a story that everyone knows about.
There are a lot of people that never get their stories told.
I feel that, as a person of color, I've always been interested in the stories that are quiet and the stories that often get overlooked.
Flaubert called himself a human pen; I would say that I am a human ear. When I walk down the street and catch words, phrases, and exclamations, I always think - how many novels disappear without a trace! Disappear into darkness.
In the present time you don't really establish what you're going through, but after time it's declared something. Right now there could be some writers doing something expressing their thoughts in a whole different style that we're not aware of. This could be the 'in-between the notes generation.'
It is the stories we don't get, the ones we miss, pass over, fail to recognize, don't pick up on, that will send us to hell.
There are literally hundreds of stories about women of color that haven't been told that are amazing, fantastic, better than anything else.
All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record.
I will take the subway and look at certain women and think 'God, that woman's story will never be told. How come that lady doesn't get a movie about her?'
