I want to be able to show up and raise the hell at the precise right moment that might tip the scales in a way that will make something a little more… - Tressie McMillan Cottom

If I believe that I can become beautiful, I become an economic subject. My desire becomes a market.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that ugly is as ugly does. Both are lies. Ugly is everything done to you in the name of beauty. Knowing the difference is part of getting free.

I have the job and the title and the letters after my name that black people are so fond of calling our educational credentials. Still, there is some tension about how I got here and what I do here. I feel the tension from colleagues who cannot process why I receive so much attention. I feel it from publics who cannot fathom why I do not get more attention or different kinds of attention. Editors want me to be a journalist. Journalists want me to stay as far away from their beat as possible. Publishers want a black woman on their pages without the expense of adding one to their mastheads. No one quite knows what to make of the work that represents the intellectual journey I took from little black girl to black woman who thinks for a living.