I am interested in engaging in a nuanced exploration via this platform, if it’s at all possible. Please join in, and as always please try to be respectful. My mother was a registered nurse, and her last two jobs took place in a maximum security juvenile detention center and...1/?
A maximum security adult prison. I have considered writing something based on her life and based on her work as a nurse. Including based on stories she shared with me of her engagements with the prisoners she cared for. 2/?
As is the case in most prisons in our country, the vast majority of her patients were black and brown. So my questions as I think about this have to do with a reluctance to tell yet more stories in which black and brown characters are prisoners... 3/?
Since for so long so many stories have only seen black and brown characters through that lens. At the same time, from what she shared with me, she did her best to take good care of these prisoners, and was troubled by the racism she witnessed from guards, staff etc...4/?
But then it looks to me like another white savior story, and we certainly have had our fill of those...
Maybe I’m being foolish in even opening this up to a public conversation like this, but I am genuinely curious to see what sort of conversation can ensue...5/?
Maybe I’m being foolish in even opening this up to a public conversation like this, but I am genuinely curious to see what sort of conversation can ensue...5/?
I have been very publicly committed to being a part of projects as an actor, writer, and director that amplify, lift up, highlight, and display a broadly diverse group of artists. I’m honored and proud to have been involved with Rent and Star Trek Discovery in particular 6/?
Since those pieces are built on a foundation of telling stories of communities that are made up of all sorts of human beings: white, black, brown, queer, etc. I think it’s deeply important, and I believe the general conversations folks are having around movements...7/?
Such as #OscarsSoWhite and #ownvoices and #RepresentationMatters are essential to dismantling blind spots and entrenched privilege and racism and systemic inequities. So in light of all that, would such a story as one focused on my mom and her job be as problematic as I fear?
