Janice Bryant Howroyd

It also is a very threadable and a very expanding thing for us.

And you try to sell something into a community without understanding its culture, you're going to go flat broke.

You try to sell an idea.

You try to sell a relationship.

into someone's home or someone's person without understanding their culture, and you're going to get closed down.

And chances are, you'll be closed down long before you realize that your trying is in vain.

And so

How that feeds into who we are personally is about making certain that we don't, you know, there's a lot of conversation about appropriating as well.

And we can get so granular in how we look at relationships.

What I found in my life, Meg,

is that we need to get in touch with who we are.

That's where all the strength, that's where all the growth, that's where all the pain can be healed is when we understand who we are.

And so I came to I'm sitting in Mexico right now.

I left the East Coast for the West Coast in the 70s and the 1970s.

And I arrived in Los Angeles

in the middle of what was a very exciting time for my sister and her husband.

They were in the entertainment industry, and I met so many stars, people who I'd read about in Jet magazine and seen on the cover of Ebony magazine and seen on TV.

I was meeting these people, and I was meeting people who were mixing, marrying, working, building across races as well as across their talents.

And so...

It was an exotic time for me as well.