Lena Waithe is tired of white people telling black stories, and said that no one can tell a black, queer story quite like her.
“I am tired of white folks telling my stories,” she said in her recent interview accompanying her first Vanity Fair cover. “We gotta tell our s—. Can’t no one tell a black story, particularly a queer story, the way I can, because I see the God in us. James Baldwin saw the God in us. Zora saw the God in us. When I’m looking for myself, I find myself in the pages of Baldwin.”
Waithe won an Emmy Award last September for her work on the “Thanksgiving” episode of “Master of None” Season 2, an episode based on her own coming out story. The win makes her the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for comedic writing.
“Here’s the irony of it all,” she told Vanity Fair. “I don’t need an Emmy to tell me to go to work. I’ve been working. I’ve been writing, I’ve been developing, I’ve been putting pieces together and I’m bullets, you know what I’m saying?”
Indeed, in addition to her work on “Master of None,” Waithe created “The Chi,” which was recently picked up for a second season at Showtime, and the pilot for her show “Twenties” was recently picked up at TBS.
“I didn’t realize I was born to stand out as much as I do,” she added. “But I’m grateful. Because the other black or brown queer kids are like, ‘Oh, we the s—.’”
Read the full cover story here.
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