“There's a stereotype that to be a strong black woman is to be strong about being black.” Quote by Ayana Mathis
“I'm wary of being put in boxes. But at the same time, it's important that I embrace my identity as a writer who happens to be gay, and in my own way I do that.” ImportantIdentityGayEmbrace Author:Ayana Mathis
“In America, and no doubt elsewhere, we have such a tendency toward the segregation of cultural products. This is a black book, this is a gay book, this is an Asian book. It can be counterproductive both to the literary enterprise and to people's reading, because it can set up barriers. Readers may think, "Oh, I'm a straight man from Atlanta and I'm white, so I won't enjoy that book because it's by a gay black woman in Brooklyn." They're encouraged to think that, in a way, because of the categorization in the media.” ThinkingMenBookReadingEnjoyBlackDoubtGayEnterpriseBarriersElsewhereBlack WomenSegregation Author:Ayana Mathis
“I couldn't imagine a book with many characters in it and one of them not being gay. It would have felt like a glaring and problematic omission for me. But I also wanted to write that character as a person, not just a gay person.” WritingBookCharacterImagineGayBeing Gay Author:Ayana Mathis
“I started writing the book without realizing I was writing a book. That sounds stupid, but it's true. I'd been trying and failing to make a different manuscript work, and I thought I was just taking a break by writing some short stories. I'm not a very good short story writer - the amazing compression that is required for short stories doesn't come easily to me. But anyway, I thought I'd try to write some short stories. And a structure took shape - I stumbled upon it.” WritingTryingBookDifferentRealizingBreakFailingStupidVery GoodShort StoryWriting A BookTrying And Failing Author:Ayana Mathis
“I like to say I had a very varied undergraduate education. I was an English major first, and then at the end of my college career I decided I was interested in urban planning. I became an urban studies major, with a minor in poetry. I don't think I knew what I was looking for in my early twenties, but I know I kept not finding it.” ThinkingStudyCollegePlanningUrbanUrban PlanningEnglish Major Author:Ayana Mathis
“A belief in God may not be fully within me anymore, but there's still a belief in belief. The high drama and power of the Church has stayed with me. As a child in church, I saw grown men at the altar crying out for God's mercy. And the idea of someone doing that has become a joke in the popular culture, but when you are there and you see it, you experience - for a moment - an incredibly raw, honest, strange insight into what it means to be a human being. Those experiences don't leave you. Whatever you think of them, they are powerful experiences.” ThinkingMenMeanChildrenMomentsCultureBeliefChurchPowerfulHonestCryStrangeDramaJokesMercyInsightPopular CultureBelief In God Author:Ayana Mathis
“The ways in which theological constructs pose questions about what it is to be a human being on this earth are deeply elegant and deeply interesting to me. I may not always agree with the answers religion offers, but I take great interest in the questions it poses.” EarthInterestInterestingAgreeTheological Author:Ayana Mathis
“Certainly I had from an early age a sense of the power and beauty of religious texts - the awesome magnitude of the Bible stories I was reading as a child. The hymns. The sermons. I can still vividly hear the sermons and the pieces of soft piano music played after them, the preacher asking if anyone wanted to come up to the altar and accept Christ as their savior.” ChildrenAgeReadingChristReligiousAcceptingSaviorPreacher 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
“By sixteen I thought, "Ah, this is all crap, you're all sheep, I'm not going to church, leave me alone." And then at a certain point in my teens I started to go to Catholic churches, by myself. Not because I wanted to be Catholic, but because I wanted to light a candle and say something like a prayer and just sit there. There was something I was missing or trying to reconnect with. But it was a secret at the time. I'd developed this cynical persona and the last thing I wanted to admit was that I was skulking around churches in my spare time.” TryingChurchPrayerSecretMissingCatholicCandleCynicalCrapLeaving MePersonaMe AloneLeave Me Alone Author:Ayana Mathis