I was watching the Nina Simone documentary alone in my room, and I said out loud to myself, 'Why do we not know that this woman is beauty? She is beauty! Why did no one tell me this growing up? Why was her name not next to 'beauty' in the dictionary?'

I loved being a redhead! I always wanted to try it. I was obsessed with Lucille Ball growing up. I really wanted to try it but I always thought that doing it would ruin my hair.

Keep in mind that diversity does not just mean black. It means all of it - age, weight, gender.

Career-wise, there are so many things where you don't get what you think you want. I've had to make space for, 'Do I let that debilitate me and make me feel bad about myself? And make me feel like I need to change myself in some way?' Because I think changing myself is very different from growing and learning.

I don't come from a Hollywood family. I don't have Hollywood friends. I didn't have any connections.

The capacity for extravagant emotion that my husband finds so attractive in me can be exhausting, especially to a child. My moods are mercurial, and this can be terrifying. I know, because I was a daughter of a mother with a changeable temperament.

Thankfully, I have never experienced a miscarriage, but I have friends and family who have, and I've talked to them about their feelings.

Family is such a fundamental part of Islam, and women run the family. I had to force myself not to impose my own definition of political and social freedom on women in Islam, and approach each story objectively.