Black Friend: Funny, incisive essays on navigating Blackness, tokenism, and friendship in predominantly white spaces.

I demand to be taken as seriously as a clown.

I am very self-conscious about the way that I look, in part because I am a woman who also happens to be conscious.

Personally, I long to be a canceled rich man because that is just a vacation.

You can't have my body, but you can have my body of work.

My art is not about success. My art is about me—my life, my experiences, my perspective. That is my cheat code. I remind myself that I am one of a kind. I am special. I have something to say. And even if no one cares, I do. The only way I could be an imposter is if I’m not true to myself.

external validation is a bottomless pit—there’s no amount that’ll make you feel whole if you do not love yourself.

I do not exist just to move plot. While I am a supportive friend, I am not a supporting character. I am the protagonist of my perfectly imperfect story.

We are wiser to the fact that having a black friend is not a defense against accusations of racism, just like having a black child does not absolve Thomas Jefferson from being a fugly hater.

If my career is a living testament of anything, let it be that one opportunity is not enough. It is a series of cracked-open windows and doors that have gotten me into a position of what I would describe as fleeting power. We need as many opportunities as possible. To fail, to be bad, and then to eventually succeed.

This unintended consequence of performing unity exemplifies the ways in which people can mean well and still do absolutely wrong. Best-case scenario, the black square shows your network that you at least care about black people enough to post a photo, which I should note is free and easy. Unfortunately, worst-case scenario, this insignificant action can set forth a tidal wave of trouble for the grassroots activists on the ground doing the work. Performing solidarity is inherently selfish. Its very point is to virtue-signal that you are a good person, because it matters to you that people know you are a good person.

But intention is not an excuse for impact.

Logic serves that if I never age, I can't be thrown away.

The last time I visited LA, I was at a cool Hollywood party where suddenly the host directed guests to look outside. Why? Because it was raining ash and if you tilted your head and hated Greta Thunberg, it looked like snow.

All of this resulted in my classmates laughing at me, which, thanks to what my therapist describes as habitual disassociation, I did not process in real time.

Toni Morrison once said that racism was a distraction. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being, wasting your time proving to others what you know to be true.

No disrespect to cat people, as I do identify as an indoor cat—emotionally withholding, vindictive, and a lover of tuna.

If you are wondering what gives me the unique qualifications to write about the complex subject of race in America, the answer is: vibes.

Listening to the voice of a woman who seemed to belong to everyone but herself reminded me of her strength, because even as Britney suffered in isolation, her words moved millions—excuse me, billions—to dance. She reminds me that there are some souls that you cannot keep down. Some people are destined to be great.

Blaming individuals is fun; deconstructing centuries of oppression requires so much boring reading.

In a televised conversation, Maya Angelou once asked the famed writer, “How do you cope with success? And after that—if you want to weave them together it is fine with me—how do you cope with despair? Despair in front of the fact that the world is saying you’re a success. Okay, so—okay?” James Baldwin: I think but I don’t know. Well, in my own case, you know, in a paradoxical fashion, which you cannot possibly explain, what is called success in my own case, right, came out of despair. Maya Angelou: No, of course. Of course, life out of death, death out of life. James Baldwin: That’s how you learn to live with despair. You live with despair. Success, I must say, is a little like finding yourself on a runaway horse, because you never see it coming, and also, in a very serious way, it is not possible, it is not possible, for an artist to be a success. You know? Maya Angelou: Would you say that again? James Baldwin: I said it is not possible for an artist to be a success. Maya Angelou: Thank you. James Baldwin: Once you think of yourself as a success . . . Maya Angelou: You’re finished. Finito. James Baldwin: Forget it. Maya Angelou: You know what I find is that you begin to believe your own publicity. James Baldwin: You begin to take your identity from other people— Maya Angelou: — from somebody else, and you stop experimenting because somebody says well when you did so-and-so, that was such a success, why don’t you do that again?

I get a sick satisfaction out of watching someone think they are right only to be proven wrong by cold hard facts. I never get an apology, but the sweet gratification of watching them fix that stupid look on their fugly face helps me sleep at night.

I'm lucky because even if I have no heir, I can appreciate that you will all take these words with you on your path. You can't have my body, but you can have my body of work.

With this policing, I had a distinct understanding of what it meant to be a woman in the world: It was mid at best.

And when they do, it is important to remember that they usually result in an incredibly privileged person temporarily experiencing slightly less privilege than they were accustomed to, which is still a very high baseline of privilege compared with the rest of the world. Personally, I long to be a canceled rich man because that is just a vacation.

One time, PETA compared their fight for animal rights to Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight for civil rights. Adopt don’t shop, fur is murder, blah blah blah, all that stuff . . . I love animals, do not get me wrong, but there is no way that Hello Kitty has done anything as iconic as writing “Letters from a Birmingham Jail.” Far

Celine Dion is a black Chow Chow and everything I could have ever asked for if what I asked for was a guard dog that did not enjoy the company of people and was too cute to intimidate strangers.