This Is What I Know:

My Father Was A Little League Dictator. That Really Affected Me, His Control-freakery, His Impunity, His Arbitrary Unreasonable Power.

You Don't Want To Let Go, But Don't Want To Be Hurt, Either. It's Not A Great Place To Be But What Can I Tell You?

I Mean In The Community That I Grew Up In, You Know, A Very, You Know, Mixed, Almost Entirely African Diaspora Community, One Of The Things That We Were Not Ever Supposed To Say Was How Much Self-hatred And Colorism Determined And Guided What We Would Call Our Desire. In Other Words, What We Would Consider Beautiful.

Art Is Not Boosterism, It's Not Propaganda, And It's Not Spin, But That's Not Something That Art Does, And Nor Has It Historically Ever Done It.

New Jersey For Me Is So Alive With History. It's Old, Dynamic, African-american, Latino.