When I was a small child I lived in Jamaica, and one of the little known perks of growing up in the island nation was learning to read early. You start primary school at the age of three. So I was reading books before I even rode a bike. When I eventually moved to the United States my mother’s first task was to take me to get a library card. I dutifully went every Saturday to the library a very kind man named Andrew Carnegie had seen fit to build. This library was on the outskirts of a New York City suburb and would be my home away from home for many years.
It was during these formative years that I dreamt of becoming a writer but not in so many words because secretly I was scared that I would not measure up to all the writers I so greatly admired. It was in that suburban library that I first discovered Tolkien, Austen, Morrison and of course the bard himself — Shakespeare. I remember reading Sophie's Choice in the 6th grade and marveling at the things we human beings can do to each other if only in a work of fiction. I read The Bluest Eye when I was around the protagonist’s age and wondered why my eyes were in fact not blue.
I read The Catcher in the Rye too soon in 6th grade, in fact, and did not understand it at all. I even remarked to a teacher that I had not enjoyed the book, and she told me she didn't believe it and that I would have to read it again. Well, she was right. I read it more age appropriately in high school and got it immediately. I came to see Holden Caulfield as one of the great heroes of fiction and J.D. Salinger as one of its virtuosos.
When I got to high school, we read Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, and I saw myself in her like I had never seen myself in another character in a book. She too was from a small place – a place that was a melange of old world and new – of the conqueror and the vanquished. She had left this place and come to the United States. Much like my own mother she had come to take care of other people's children. Lucy was emblematic of the kind of heroine I would go on to write – tough and tender, jaded and innocent all at the same time.
It wasn't until I was a junior in high school that I became a film buff. It was then that my passion for the written word morphed into a passion for the moving image. An idea began to take shape. Maybe I could work in this crazy world of film, but I wasn't sure how I would find my place there, and it would be years before I thought of myself as a screenwriter.
I was equally captivated by comedies like the films of Eddie Murphy as well as period dramas like The Age of Innocence and Dangerous Liaisons. I grew up on homespun fare like Cosby and Family Ties. These sitcoms painted the picture of a world of black and white, good and evil without the nuance we see in today’s half hour comedies. They were catnip to a budding writer.
In the years since, I have set out to fashion my own universe of characters with nuance and grit always seeking to remember the feeling those novels that I read early on in life instilled in me. I seek to thrill and entertain but also to provoke the audience into thinking. Not necessarily thinking one way or another but just questioning their presuppositions about women heroines in general and Black women in particular.
My goal as a writer and filmmaker is to always subvert expectations and keep the audience wanting more long after I have written Fade Out.