It shocked me and concerned me how quickly we criminalize and don’t give second chances to young men of color, and particularly young African America… - Dominique Morisseau

I had been reading Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow, which talks about mass incarceration and mass incarceration being the new Jim Crow. But I really believe education is also the new Jim Crow right now because there is so much segregation in education, and there’s an excessive system of have and have-nots. So I was first and foremost interested in exploring the school-to-prison pipeline because of how personally it affected some people in my life.

When I’m writing, I can see myself in all of the characters I write.

“I’m tired of lip service…There’s a lot of: ‘We really want to do this’, and then I realise they just don’t listen. They say they want your voice, but when you use your voice, they don’t want to do anything you say.