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

“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.

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 American men…