Adiba Nelson

Dark brown girls should never ever ever ever EVER wear frosty pink lipstick. EVER. I don’t give a rat’s ASS what Cosmo says - just NO.

“Why would you do that? You have a daughter. Why would you put yourself in that position?”

He opened his mouth and time stood still. My pulse quickened. My heart raced. My eyes filled with tears. And I. WAS. PROUD.

If 93% of the Academy is White, but as of 2014, only 62% of Americans were White, and art is supposed to imitate life...

My job is to make you feel — whether it’s lust, pride, anger, guilt, joy, sadness — whatever it is you feel, I want you to feel it.

I applaud you for being here. I applaud you for giving life the five fingers of death and deciding to show up for whatever the day brings — every day.

Black women were branded as sexually promiscuous and immoral, which in turn was used as justification for sexual trauma/rape.

Nicely done, MAC. Nicely done.

Black women have endured the unfathomable. We’ve watched our leaders be assassinated, and our hopes go with them. We’ve watched the nation’s leaders be assassinated, and watched our hopes float away with them too. We’ve buried our 5-year-old daughters after they were bombed to death in church, our 12-year-old sons who were playing in the park, and our 29-year-old daughters who were stopped for simple traffic violations.

This book is real, folks. As well it should be –– it was written by one of the realest women on the planet.