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it's so important to have
black storytellers in music in the arts
in film in literature because we have
important stories to tell and we are
fully
human the only way that you can show
the full breadth of our humanity is to
be present to be represented and to be
able to tell your own stories
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we interviewed some of the best and
brightest black storytellers of our time
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these people are true talents and take
their crafts to new heights
each of them come from vastly different
fields of work
but the one thing that bonds them
together is their ability to tell
compelling stories through their mediums
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story has the power
to imprint on
our memory in a way
that pretty much nothing else does
when stories are left out
a section of humanity is left out and
when you hear
someone's story you can connect with
them on a way and it makes it so much
harder for you
to enact violence on someone or to
discriminate against someone when you
know
their story i've dedicated my life to
storytelling it's
one of the greatest ways to transform
like the hearts and minds of individuals
to try to bring people together to try
to make a more loving place
photography has always been writing
stories i see a story
in front of me and i'm trying to figure
out how to capture it
history tells us that our stories are
not considered as valuable or worthwhile
and that if you want to be a true and
successful storyteller
you have to tell the universal story
which really means the white story
and i just refuse to do that with the
1619 project
and my work in general i really try to
put
the legacy of slavery and the
contributions of black americans at the
center
how do we understand how we got here
today if we don't understand
the history and the architecture that
built the society that we live in
a lot of what drives me in my work is
creating
images of people of color of children of
color
in ways that i never got to see them
when i was growing up i didn't have any
books with
people that looked like me so i'm really
excited to kind of
open up as many different aesthetics and
and styles to young readers
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when people listen to my music i want
them to take away that
they're not isolated in their challenges
the song let go
speaks to how black men feel when
confronted
by the police even when you're selfishly
kind of
creating your own therapy in your art
you're also doing that for other people
and
by doing that song i was able to create
even closure in places where i still
held on the feelings because i placed it
in a
piece of art and i think for other
people they can connect with the honesty
there
the challenge is being in a world
where you don't see yourself i get an
email
from a black mother who has lost her son
and she says to me
that she's been looking for a way
to reflect her loss
for years and it wasn't till she saw
my painting on the cover of time
magazine that she felt like she saw an
image
that actually reflected her loss
identifying stereotypes in black culture
it's kind of easy for me to see we all
see it and because we don't like it
it look it sticks out it's not right
i started my film career with
you know the mindset that we would not
further along these stereotypes and not
depict
these images in our film so and do the
right thing you don't see a kid
with a basketball bouncing it down the
middle of the road
and so in many films that you see um
of mine there is a sense of pride in
culture with hair love the big
stereotype we try to debunk was the fact
that black fathers aren't involved in
their kids lives
that's definitely something that's
persistent in the film industry
you know black men not being depicted as
good dads or being present that was a
big thing that we try to
circumvent the ability to see yourself
represented means a lot and people need
to see themselves as a mirror
in the work that they consume
when people see us dress as kings
a lot of times they're like oh they're
hollow it's materialism but
you know people don't see the work that
goes into it the idea of us being
materialistic as a culture is just
insufficient
most people report that they do not know
a trans person or they're not aware they
know a trans person so
most of their information about who
trans people are comes from what they
watch from television
and on film and if those representations
are showing us as
victims as devious people cisgender
people playing dress-up
then they're going to get
misinterpretations of who we actually
are
when you have real trans people playing
real fully fleshed out
characters it shows the humanity of who
we truly are
i think for me that's my goal in terms
of how to look
ahead at the types of stories that we're
telling
and i think giving other people the
opportunity to
share their world view and their
perspective is going to be so important
in leveling that
i think what's really exciting about
making work for young readers
is that the work gets to be wonderful
and whimsical
and kind of hopeful and i really want to
make work that shows young people that
there
are so many options and opportunities
for them
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where i live where my palate is is black
that the experiences that i see around
me are
black that the voices that i hear the
songs that i hear
the footsteps the the laughter
the grown the quarrels the the
expletives they're black
and i try to trap them in a frame
our culture has brought so much in terms
of creativity
in terms of connection and innovation so
it's like to overlook that
and to devalue that is just it's tragic
and it lessens who we are as people
as a whole so you know we we're here and
because we're here we matter
so when i think about particularly the
tradition of black journalists but black
storytellers
in general it has been to push back
against the narratives of white
supremacy that said that we were an
inferior and a lesser people
but when we grab the reigns and we
control our own stories and we give a
truer depiction of black life and we are
able
to affirm our culture and affirm our
people
and to give a much more accurate
depiction of what it means to be an
american and what it means to be a black
american in particular
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you