Morgan Parker Quotes
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Since the election [of Donald Trump], I've been thinking about a lot of theory. Lots of [Michel] Foucault and [Karl] Marx, thinking about different systems, thinking about power. Trying to figure out what I can take and learn from history as a tool for getting through whatever is happening right now, which feels very significant and major.
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It's hard for black women to ask for help. We think we don't need it. We're used to being in pain and living with it.
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Mickalene [Thomas] is an artist that I have admired for a long time. So much of her work inspires me - I spend time looking at her work when I'm writing. I feel like we're working toward the same themes, and I see our work in conversation, whether we know it or not.
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I'm not reading any kind of fantasy [for young adults] or Hunger Games or anything like that. It's more just like geeks with crushes. It's very sweet, and I'm enjoying how honest they are, and I'm enjoying the humanity in them.
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In my experience when I do try to avoid something, it makes its way into the work anyway. To be in front of it and just make friends with it is easier for me.
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After a while, being so honest and so vulnerable on the page ends up affecting my own kind of self possession in the world, because I am not afraid of myself and my own thoughts. I think so much of being a woman, of being a social being, of being polite, is quieting those thoughts. There's so much we try not to say as we go through the day. There's a lot of tempering and self-editing. It is a relief to make writing that space where I don't need to do that.
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Where I would usually backspace, I stop and say, "You know what? This is important, that I say how I feel and don't sugarcoat it, and don't avoid it."
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I don't think that there are as many black women or women of color becoming psychiatrists, so we can't find them and then we feel looked at and studied and that's part of what is damaging to us. It's hard to find therapy that is actually a tool for your own liberation. I think we can be really distrustful.
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I guess the only thing I'd say is it ['There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?'] shouldn't be read as "Beyoncé is not beautiful."
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I liked the idea of using this mega-star [Beyoncé ] to talk about all those things on the tiny scale of my life.
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Art movements are always linked to some kind of turmoil. We can look at history and see that [political turmoil is] fertile ground for art. I also think that it gives artists something, a way of kind of processing. My friends and I have all been super motivated to work and to do the work that we need to and want to and think should be in the world. Hard times are really a fire under your ass to prioritize and think, "Okay, how can I challenge myself to put something in the world that wasn't there that can reach other folks and help them to process"?
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We can look at history and see that [political turmoil is] fertile ground for art.
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I think there's something that's fascist [in Donald Trump's election], and something that I think we could probably learn from, in terms of the energy in the world right now.
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I think sometimes the stars align whether we want them to or not. And we're drawn to certain people and places for no other reason than...Destiny.
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I'm working on a young adult novel. I've been working on it for a while, because I don't know how to write a novel and I'm teaching myself. For that reason, I've been reading a lot of YA [young adults], which I never have before. It's totally new to me.
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There was something about Beyoncé that felt like a vessel, I guess, that I could kind of impose all of these feelings and thoughts onto. I was drawn to a little bit of a dichotomy between the glamour and celebrity and the very deep and complex legacy of black women, and what that means in terms of performance.
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I try to convey what it feels like and sounds like and smells like and looks like inside of my particular skin, to move through the world as a black American woman in her mid-twenties.
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I've been thinking a lot about folks denying what has happened in history, or just not acknowledging it.
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I think often if people don't have a lot of experience with a particular type of person or a particular type of brain, they can make dangerous assumptions. That's one of the reasons that I'm so interested in contradicting and troubling held thoughts about black women.
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In grad school, a friend and I gave ourselves the task of writing poems in the voice of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga after they did the collaboration for "Telephone." I just kind of kept going. That was quite a while ago - Beyoncé meant something very different then than she does now.
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I always say that my artist statement is to not be afraid to talk about the messiness - the unpleasant feelings and happenings around my life. I also try to convey what it feels like and sounds like and smells like and looks like inside of my particular skin, to move through the world as a black American woman in her mid-twenties. Language from songs and TV shows feel integral because it helps to create the environment and describe the full picture.
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I struggle with depression and anxiety, and I have since I was a teenager. I spent a good chunk of time being very ashamed of that. Now I feel committed to talking about it and trying to normalize it as much as I can.
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Language from songs and TV shows feel integral because it helps to create the environment and describe the full picture.
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Hard times are really a fire under your ass to prioritize and think, "Okay, how can I challenge myself to put something in the world that wasn't there that can reach other folks and help them to process?"
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My friends and I have all been super motivated to work and to do the work that we need to and want to and think should be in the world.
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The book [There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?] is quite complex, and I was worried that it would be marketed as one-sided or flat, and I knew that Mickalene's [Tomas] work would be able to encompass all the many states of being that are in the book.
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It's been interesting to look back on those works [I've done previously] and see all the things that Beyoncé has done and become for us in the meantime, because back then, folks were like, "Why Beyoncé? I don't get why she is kind of the symbol for black womanhood."
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I really hope that people feel permission to talk about their own troubles, but also to celebrate themselves.
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So much of the world and the systems that we live within are made to keep us from feeling like we're free. The way that black women in American came to be is just diametrically opposed to being free.
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Love makes you smart and strong. Smart enough to know there is nothing else that matters. Strong enough to know that nothing else can weaken you. When you're in love, you're at peace, you're whole, and always safe. I know I made you feel at peace.
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