Award-winning author Kellye Garrett grew up with a passion for fiction.
“Since I was five years old, I’ve known I wanted to be a writer,” she admitted in an interview with the L.A. Watts Times.
“I was lucky in that mom was a big reader, so I definitely got that from her. As I got older, she gave me free reign over bookshelves.
This was in the 90s, so I got to read some really amazing authors. People like Terry McMillian, Eric Jerome Dickey, and Walter Mosley were blowing up, so I was really lucky because it taught me that representation matters.”
Garrett is the author of three novels—her “Detective by Day” Series, and then her most recent novel, “Like A Sister,” A twisty, voice-driven thriller novel, “Like A Sister” follows a dead Black Reality TV Star’s half-estranged sister who refuses to believe the official story of her death and seeks to find out the dangerous truth.
“[Like A Sister] came from an actual New York Daily headline. The opening of the book says I found out my sister died from the New York Daily News, and I think the actual headline was something, like, pregnant, former reality star found dead in Bronx,” Garrett told the L.A. Watts Times.
“The woman in me thought oh, that’s terrible way to pass away, but I also thought the headline was very hurtful because it was a Black woman, like they wouldn’t be doing that for a Kardashian. But the writer in me was like Oh that’s a good mystery. How did this glamorous reality star go from partying up in Downtown Manhattan to dying alone on a street corner in the Bronx? And then one day said, Oh she was going to see her estranged sister, and never made it.
She continued, “So that’s where the book came from—it’s from the POV of her estranged Sister [Lena]. She hadn’t talked to her sister in two years but knows that she was coming to see her at five in the morning, didn’t make it, and wants to know what happened.”
Within all of Garrett’s novels she incorporates different depictions of Black women, something the author said is not intentional, but just a part of her writing about Black people. Her main character, Lena, is a woman described as the strong one who laughs rather than cries, and always gets her tasks done.
The main character of “Like A Sister,” Lena, is a woman described as the strong one who laughs rather than cries, and always gets her tasks done.
In describing the making of Lena’s character, Garret shared that, “I think with a lot of Black people, we have to have a sense of humor because of our history. We can almost always make a joke about anything, and it’d be funny, so I wanted that to kind of have that in a character. Usually, [in the domestic suspense genre] you see things like “Gone Girl, which is about like some white woman who’s married and living in the suburbs and is lying about something. So, as a Black woman, living in the city, I couldn’t identify with that.”
“I wanted to see someone who looks like me, like my family, on those pages,” Kellye Garret continued, “but I also knew that because it was a Black woman, she would not get the same grace and sympathy that she’d get.
So, I wanted to talk about that, too—like, the strong Black woman cape that she uses as a cape, and that she uses as a shield. And that she needs to be more vulnerable.”
It being National Women’s Month and Garret being a Black female author, when asked if Garrett is intentional about the way she portrays her female characters, she shared that “sometimes you have to be, we have to talk about race a lot.”
“There are a lot of things we have to write about,” said Garret. “I feel like often, other races want us to breed our work, which makes me sad because I think we should be able to have all types of stories,” she expressed.
“We should be able to have a really good books and literature, like Toni Morrison. We should be able to have really bad books, too, you know? Or books that are just fun. I think what I want is for Black people, especially Black women, to write whatever they want. I don’t think we’re at that point, but I really hope that one day we are.”
Within all of Garrett’s novels she incorporates different depictions of Black women, something the author said is not intentional, but just a part of her writing about Black people.
“I just wanted to write about awesome Black women because that’s how Black women are—we’re so diverse and different.”
Being a Black woman or man in the publishing industry is not an easy aspiration. Black authors often face a lot of pushback when trying to tell the stories of Black people; their passions being the only thing that keeps them going. ‘
With this, Garret’s advice to other young black women, trying to tell write and tell Black stories is that “it can be painful sometimes, but keep going…keep writing every day, every week, and you’ll have a finished book.”
“Somedays, I tell myself I keep going because I’m not good at anything else,” the author joked. “I just love writing—I hate writing, but I love having written. I love the creative process, and that’s what keeps me going. I keep doing it because it’s what I love. I always go back to that five-year-old girl. This is what she wants.”
Kellye Garrett’s books are sold everywhere books are sold. For more information on the author, visit https://kellyegarrett.com. Also check out her Instagram (@kellyekell).
Dr. Joyce Dixon Hightower is a medical doctor, accomplished author, speaker, and compassionate humanitarian who has been educating, feeding, and housing marginalized youth, empowering women, and strengthening African communities and families for over 30 years.
Hightower grew up in a poor rural area in Northern Los Angeles County under the strong influence of community service from her father, Superintendent Samuel Dixon, pastor of Macedonia Church of God in Christ, and mother, Evelyn Dixon, medical technologist.
Her work experience in Africa began in 1977 as a high school science teacher in rural Kenya.
In response to the challenge to increase the number of the country’s candidates for medical school, Hightower returned to the U.S. and completed medical school in 1988.
While practicing in central California, Hightower led medical mission teams to Kenya and supported orphanages and rural clinics with supplies.
In 2001, a unique medical mission trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in Central Africa caused a dramatic change in the direction of her life.
In 2002, Hightower returned to DRC as a volunteer public health improvement consultant.
In 2009, Hightower began working for the World Health Organization (WHO) in the African Region.
She found ways to support orphans, especially in Ethiopia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, while continuing to develop DRC efforts.
In 2012, she founded the Dixon-Hightower Foundation, a 501c3 organization that uniquely focused on providing ongoing charitable and quality education to support orphans, widows, and marginalized people worldwide.
Winding her WHO efforts down for retirement, in 2015, Hightower was sent to Guinea Conakry to lead the WHO fight against the Ebola pandemic.
It turned out to be one of the high achievement points of her career. After returning to the U.S., she began working in a local clinic to support the DRC orphanage and school and retired again in 2021.
Outlining her plans, Hightower explained, “As in other projects in various countries over the last 30 years, the one planned in the DRC will be self-sufficient when completed. The Solid Rock Youth Complex (SRYC) project in the (DRC) has lasted the longest and received a significant financial investment because of its strategic capacity to impact the greatest need.
“We are giving livelihood training for widows, providing housing for orphans, and have 200 students attending (pre-school through 6th grade presently occupying much of the orphanage building). Our school has a 100% national exam pass rate, and the demand for placement for orphans and students has skyrocketed,” she said.
“We must raise $700,000 to complete the school building, 7th through 12th grade, for over four hundred children. Once the school moves out of the orphanage building, we could accept more baby orphans.”
Hightower’s uncle, the honorable Bishop Roy Dixon, D.D., jurisdictional prelate of Southern California 4th Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, Church of God in Christ, said, “I’ve been to the Congo and visited the school, orphanage, and widows’ project comprising the Solid Rock Youth Complex sponsored by the Dixon-Hightower Foundation. It’s such an unusual thing that my niece is doing. She’s an M.D. and gives 90% of her salary to this work in the Congo. There are many miraculous stories to tell.”
Dixon continued, “She built the orphanage, and 17 homeless, fatherless, and motherless children call SRYC home.
They are at that school day and night because this is their home. She’s their mother, she is their father, and this is the only hope these children and many others have.
“Not only is she providing for those children physically, emotionally, and educationally at the school that she is building, but she is also putting them through higher grades in other facilities throughout the Congo.”
When asked, what is your desire for the women, children, and people in the Congo where you’re still helping and have invested so many years?
Hightower stated, “I would like this project to stand as an encouraging example of hope and self-sufficiency by using support tools provided and working hard together. I want the people that we support to know that God hears their prayers wherever they are and provides for them.
“Just like God put it in my heart to come all the way from Newhall, California, He can hear their prayers to do whatever He puts in their hearts to do.”
Sharing what she’d like her life to reflect, Hightower said, “I want the biggest message of my life to be that God puts in your heart what He uses to show His greatness, love, and almighty power. We have the privilege of joining in these loving acts.”
To lend support, visit: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=USX9VBUBN32HQ or https://gofund.me/a416541f
Learn more at: https://www.dixonhightowerfoundation.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/dixon-hightower-foundation
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Multi-hyphenate star, Jasmin Brown, grew up with dreams to work in the entertainment industry, and is now filling our homes and hearts with laughter through her raw and authentic style of comedy.
“I’ve always had a dream of being in entertainment. I’ve always been a character, from church plays to dressing up and doing improvisation with my family and things.” Brown continued sharing that, as a child, she would use her allowance to buy wigs and costumes to create characters.
“I would get a disposable camera, and I’d have my brother and sister take pictures of me dressed as someone else,” she shared. “I would even change my voice when I played Barbies, making sure they had different personalities and voices, so I knew that I was always a character actor. When I got older, I started taking classes and things like that.”
The actress, writer, producer, and standup comedian is well known for inspiring people around the world through her humor but is also well known for her social media persona, Toya Turnup’s, in-car rants, along with her fan-favorite role as Deja in the BET+ show “Zatima”.
Brown labeled Deja as “the girl everybody knows” on “Zatima”.
“There’s an episode on ‘Zatima’ where Fatima (Crystal Renee Hayslett) was like ‘I know exactly who that is, I don’t even have to know her.’…
We all know a girl like that, who will smile in your face but be right after your man.”
Jasmin Brown shared that Davale Ellis, who plays the main character, Zac, in “Zatima”, had immediately thought of her when crafting the character of Deja. After auditioning for the role, she’d gotten hired on the spot.
“I love playing Deja because I’m not that girl,” Brown said. “You know, take away the negativity that she’s chasing after someone’s man and whatever.
It’s written that Deja kind of won’t let up, but for me, Deja is a hustler. She doesn’t like to be told no, it’s like a challenge.”
She continues, “So it’s not even that she’s really into Zac like that. It’s just the fact that he keeps saying no.
I believe if she ever really got her way, she would be over it.
Usually the cat-and-mouse game would be opposite. It’s a man chasing the woman, so it’s cool to be a woman and chase the guy. And there’s so much comedy in there. It’s just so fun playing her..It just feels cool to be someone else, and to be acknowledged as the character people love to hate.”
Season 2 of “Zatima” airs March 16th, and Brown shared that fans will be seeing a lot more of her character.
“…you might start to like her or not. You know, I think there’s a lot of really cool moments where people will see Deja’s not that bad, or she’s actually kind of funny. I can kind of relate to her in that way,” said the comedian. “You see way more of her [in season 2], even though she’s got some tricks up her sleeve. I still think that she’s likable.”
With this, Brown shared that “she loves being the villain” in the show.
“I like being the one that, every time you see my character, you’re like ‘oh, here she goes!’” She laughed, “Giving the fans and audience that reaction every time I come on screen that it’s gonna be some mess. That’s what I really love about that character.”
Jasmin Brown is a woman making a name for herself with the comedy sector, a male dominated industry, and it being National Women’s month, her advice for women is “to do what works for you.”
“You don’t really need advice,” she said. “Trust yourself. You know, I'm a person who is an over thinker, but deep down like I know what I'm capable of, and I do trust myself, I do trust my abilities and I do trust my talents. You have to just stick to whatever it is you’re doing and don't care if there's other people doing the thing. You do it.”
“There's gonna be people who always love your stuff, that are always gonna come back to you. And they're always gonna support you.
You have your fans, you have your support system, you have your team. It's important to really identify that and know what that means to you. So, yeah, trust yourself, stick to your guns and do it yourself.”
For more information on Jasmine Brown, you can check out her Instagram (@watchjazzy).
Oscar winner Ruth E. Carter does not need an introduction. Carter made history as the first Black to win the Oscar for Best Costume Design for her stunning creations in the Marvel blockbuster “Black Panther.” She’s nominated again for the beautiful sequel, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”
This Oscar nomination is the fourth for Carter in the Best Costume Design category. She is a previous Oscar nominee for the Spike Lee directed “Malcolm X,” 1993; Steven Spielberg’s slave-ship drama “Amistad,” 1997; Ryan Coogler’s directed “Black Panther,” 2019; and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” 2022.
With over 60 films and television shows to her credit as a lead costume designer and numerous industry recognitions, Carter said of her first Oscar win; this was a “longtime coming.”
“I’ve been designing heroes and sheroes throughout my career,” Carter said.
And that is a fact. The list of Carter’s triumphant and celebrated works is tremendous.
It reads as a who’s who list of Black cinema: “School Daze,” “Roots,” “Selma,” “Coming to America,” “Marshall,” “Rosewood,” “The Butler,” “Sparkle,” “Shaft,” “Love & Basketball,” “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” “Mo’ Better Blues,” “Do the Right Thing,” “Da Sweet Blood of Jesus,” “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” “Black Panther,” and the list goes on and on.
Carter has established herself as a master storyteller through her designs and is incredibly proud of her work in “Wakanda Forever.” “This one is bittersweet because we did lose our friend [the late Actor Chadwick Boseman]. We honored his legacy, and we know there would be no ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’ without him,” Carter said. “I have cherished his memory with this costume display.”
Carter considers “Wakanda Forever” bigger than the first Black Panther, “so many touched this film, and we were bringing in a new culture, and that was scary.” Coogler, the director of both Panther movies, and Carter were intentional in their beautiful display of African culture on film. “I’m always thinking in the direction of how I can shock the system in seeing this collaboration of composition, color, and culture,” she said.
A self-described contributor and listener, Carter says she knew of her added value to both Panther films as she embraced her abilities to lead a costume department in the 1990s. “I embraced my abilities as a costume designer when Spike Lee would go to executive meetings and introduce me as his costume designer. I knew then that I added value to films I touched,” said Carter. “As an artist, I want to be in balance with the story, and seeking balance comes from my background in theater.”
A graduate of an HBCU, Hampton University, a shared alma mater with this writer, Carter initially embarked on a career path as a theater actor. At Hampton, she auditioned for an acting role that didn’t go well, and the director offered her work as the costume designer for the play. “I didn’t know what a costume designer did, but I looked it up,” she recalled.
Carter apprenticed at the Santa Fe Opera before relocating to Los Angeles, continuing her work in the theater. In 1988, director Spike Lee recruited Carter to design costumes for “School Daze” and they have worked together on 14 films. Carter thanked Lee first during her Oscar speech, expressing her gratitude and hopes that she had made him proud. From the audience, Lee enthusiastically responded that he was indeed proud - a full circle moment, a destiny fulfilled.
In an industry where Carter admits change happens rapidly - “one day you’re hot, and the next day you’re not” - she is focused on keeping her designs fresh and new. Carter remains inspired by history and the great artistic works of those who have come before her. “I fell in love with Black history and the African Diaspora, and I couldn’t get enough of Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin,” she said.
Carter lives by the example of women leading the way. Reflecting on her journey with colleagues and friends like Angela Bassett, Carter says they represented a part of the industry who were taking the front seat at the start of their careers. “I didn’t want to go into a project where I was sewing and mending. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I did not want to do that,” Carter said.
“I started in independent films and had to find my opportunities.” Carter says she was happy working on films like “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka,” “B*A*P*S,” “The Five Heart Beats” and “Mo’ Better Blues” and then she received an Oscar nomination for the sensational “Malcolm X.”
Today, the vibrant and uber-talented Ruth E. Carter from Springfield, Massachusetts impacts and influences how others see Black Americans on the big screen.
“I feel good about the decisions I have made for myself,” she declared.
Watch the 95th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 12, on ABC.