Make Your Mark BIPOC Arts Scholarship

Currently, I am working on a couple of projects, both screenplays that I plan on turning into films. My short script "Crane," which focuses on a grieving teen who recently lost his parents deciding to skip school after his uncle does the unthinkable, explores the themes of freedom and faith and the fragility of them. No matter what we base our freedom on and what we base our faith in, they are living things that drive us, and we cannot have one without the other. It centers on a young dark-skinned boy navigating grief and trauma. My feature-length screenplay entitled “Home,” follows an anxious girl who, after her mother kicks her out of the house, is forced to live in her car. The film features two teenage girls in an intimate exchange and explores the internal and external battle of coming to terms with one’s sexuality. The main character is in love with the free-spirited dog walker but she’s the one who got her kicked out in the first place. I see it as a Black Independent Film. Attempting to possess the voices of queer, Black women, I display one possible outlook on the queer experience. This story highlights what many people in the LGBTQIA+ community, especially in Black families, even more specifically in Black, religious families, are faced with. I know firsthand how it feels to be queer in a Black, religious household. I'm a screenwriter, poet, and painter who creates stories about the African American experience, gender, and sexual orientation: the intersectionality of their lived experiences, the exclusion of identity within these groups, and the silencing of their voices. As a Black and queer female writer, I write stories that affirm our existence. I want us to be seen as real and here, and to add representation of lost voices to my screenplays and create narratives that reflect and diversify the Black experience. With my desire to further my career as a feature screenwriter, I will reimagine and redefine how Blackness is currently depicted—particularly in connection with disabilities, mental illness, sexual violence and abuse, and gender expression.