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In grad school, a friend and I gave ourselves the task of writing poems in the voice of Beyoncé and Lady Gaga after they did the collaboration for Telephone. I just kind of kept going. That was quite a while ago - Beyoncé meant something very different then than she does now.

Morgan Parker

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Morgan Parker
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: January 1
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My friends and I have all been super motivated to work and to do the work that we need to and want to and think should be in the world.
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Sometimes I feel as though I'm trying to take a hit for the team so that other people then can move forward. I'm like, Look, I just laid out all of my stuff, so what's the worst that can happen?.
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Mickalene [Thomas] is an artist that I have admired for a long time. So much of her work inspires me - I spend time looking at her work when I'm writing. I feel like we're working toward the same themes, and I see our work in conversation, whether we know it or not.
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I think there's something that's fascist [in Donald Trump's election], and something that I think we could probably learn from, in terms of the energy in the world right now.
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I'm working on a young adult novel. I've been working on it for a while, because I don't know how to write a novel and I'm teaching myself. For that reason, I've been reading a lot of YA [young adults], which I never have before. It's totally new to me.
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I struggle with depression and anxiety, and I have since I was a teenager. I spent a good chunk of time being very ashamed of that. Now I feel committed to talking about it and trying to normalize it as much as I can.
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I've been thinking a lot about folks denying what has happened in history, or just not acknowledging it.
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Sometimes it's just rejecting stereotypes, sometimes it's creating work. Sometimes it's just blocking out the noise.
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I think that we need to make it our goal to define freedom for ourselves.
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I don't think that there are as many black women or women of color becoming psychiatrists, so we can't find them and then we feel looked at and studied and that's part of what is damaging to us. It's hard to find therapy that is actually a tool for your own liberation. I think we can be really distrustful.
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There's something about us using the word fascism and thinking about, What is it? What does it mean, and what are the tenets of it?.
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It's been interesting to look back on those works [I've done previously] and see all the things that Beyoncé has done and become for us in the meantime, because back then, folks were like, Why Beyoncé? I don't get why she is kind of the symbol for black womanhood.
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I spent a lot of time trying to layer upon layer upon layer as I wrote. I think that's often the fear of a writer, that little nuances won't get picked up.
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I don't claim to say, All black women are like me, because they're not.
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It's hard for black women to ask for help. We think we don't need it. We're used to being in pain and living with it.
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I wanted [the book 'There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?'] to be colorful. I wanted it to be evocative. I wanted a figure of a black woman that the reader has to confront.
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There was something about Beyoncé that felt like a vessel, I guess, that I could kind of impose all of these feelings and thoughts onto. I was drawn to a little bit of a dichotomy between the glamour and celebrity and the very deep and complex legacy of black women, and what that means in terms of performance.
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I also think that [political turmoil] gives artists something, a way of kind of processing.
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I guess the only thing I'd say is it ['There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé?'] shouldn't be read as Beyoncé is not beautiful.
Morgan Parker