Racial terrorism affects the lives of white people and black people and everyone, everything. Racism is contaminating. It can affect the dogs… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
I think that people have some sort of vision that everybody is moving towards perfection, and that there is some sort of… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
There is a forgotten black middle class in America - a group which is huge but underrepresented in the media and in… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
At some point I just acknowledged, at least to myself, that I had a great deal of respect for people of faith.… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
I think that if you just write your characters you end up with something that people can access. — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
There were class differences among black people then and there are class differences among black people now. There is still an assumption… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
Fiction writing is an act of imagination, lived experience is secondary in many ways, writing a novel really is all about inventing… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
There is still an assumption among many people that to be black is to be lower class. In the last fifteen to… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
Half of what's wrong with people today is that they ain't got no place to go that makes them peaceful. — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
If there had never been the Great Migration there would never have been jazz, there would never have been Michelle Obama. A… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
“In one of the novel’s most dramatic and revealing chapters, Hattie leaves August with the older children and escapes with baby Ruthie (then called… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
I think being consistent is really important. In the arts there's a misconception that you sit around waiting for the muse to come, and… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
I think of my success as a kind of fluke. How else could I possibly think of it? And although it's a banal thing… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
You have to find a way of shutting the future out and focusing on the writing. One of the problems I'll have with writing… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
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… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
“Half of what’s wrong with people today is that they ain’t got no place to go that makes them peaceful. I don’t reckon you… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
“Bell lifted her hand to her chest. Her heart beat so quickly. She was floating out on a tide of agony, and soon she… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
Racial terrorism affects the lives of white people and black people and everyone, everything. Racism is contaminating. It can affect the dogs in the… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
“Hattie’s children died in the order in which they were born: first Philadelphia, then Jubilee.” — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
“Six understood in that instant that he had something the ministers wanted and it had given him power among them. He had never been… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
I really, deeply believe in the primacy of character. I believe that my job as a writer is to put a believable human being… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
“I go above deck to watch the sky darken into twilight. It helps me remember that this strange place is still the earth, and… — Ayana Mathis Copy Share Image
