“Half of what's wrong with people today is that they ain't got no place to go that makes them peaceful.” PeopleTodayHalfPeacefulPlaces To Go Author:Ayana Mathis
“Fiction writing is an act of imagination, lived experience is secondary in many ways, writing a novel really is all about inventing worlds and people.” PeopleWorldWayWritingImaginationFictionNovelInventingFiction Writing Author:Ayana Mathis
“I think that if you just write your characters you end up with something that people can access.” PeopleIfsThinkingWritingEndsCharacterAccess Author:Ayana Mathis
“I think that people have some sort of vision that everybody is moving towards perfection, and that there is some sort of set steps or something like that that you can move through to get to that place, and that that's sort of the project of being alive.” PeopleThinkingMovingVisionStepsAliveProjectsPerfection Author:Ayana Mathis
“There were class differences among black people then and there are class differences among black people now. There is still an assumption among many people in American society that being black is its own class, a blanket class. That, I believe, is an erroneous and deeply offensive view.” PeopleBelieveI BelieveBlackAssumptionBlack PeopleOffensiveBlanket Author:Ayana Mathis
“There is a forgotten black middle class in America - a group which is huge but underrepresented in the media and in art. It's difficult to talk about these things, because it forces one to talk in generalities, but that's my view. I do think the idea of a blanket class for black people is unfortunately still present.” PeopleThinkingArtDifficultBlackForgottenMiddle ClassBlack PeopleBlanket Author:Ayana Mathis
“There is still an assumption among many people that to be black is to be lower class. In the last fifteen to twenty years, perhaps even further back than that, there's also been an explosion of a very wealthy black class in the United States, but those people are often treated as special cases: they're athletes, entertainers. Jay-Z. Basketball players. The country metabolizes the fact these rich black people exist, but it seems only to reinforce the idea that every other black person is limping along in poverty.” PeopleCountryBlackPovertyRichPlayerSpecialBasketballAthleteAssumptionWealthyBlack PeopleBasketball Player Author:Ayana Mathis
“If there had never been the Great Migration there would never have been jazz, there would never have been Michelle Obama. A lot of amazing black people exist in this country because of the Great Migration. That's nation-building.” PeopleCountryBlackJazzBlack People Author:Ayana Mathis
“Racial terrorism affects the lives of white people and black people and everyone, everything. Racism is contaminating. It can affect the dogs in the street. So the process of beginning to rid the country of prejudice was in itself a kind of nation-building.” PeopleKindCountryBlackDogRacismPrejudiceTerrorismBlack People Author:Ayana Mathis
“At some point I just acknowledged, at least to myself, that I had a great deal of respect for people of faith. Faith is a strange and wonderful thing. You come up to a kind of wall of unknowing and instead of turning back in despair you leap over it into something else. The Church isn't why I'm a writer, but it's probably a part of it.” PeopleKindChurchWonderfulStrangeWallDespairOver ItLeapUnknowing Author:Ayana Mathis