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I think that black fiction authors have to work very hard to avoid being typed as seeking only a black audience.

I don't think there's enough breadth to the stories told about African-Americans.

Why would you create a movie for black people if you don't understand the history and perspective of the people you are doing it for? You need historical perspective to make sound decisions.

I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.

I have a theory. An audience doesn't need to get wrapped up in blackness every time they see a Negro actor. And a movie doesn't have to be about race just because there's a Negro in it.

Audiences want great story telling; it's why white people watch my show 'Black in America.' It's why black people watch 'Latina in America.' All of that is statistically shown and proven but it was because it was good story telling about people who were outsiders.

In a typical history book, black Americans are mentioned in the context of slavery or civil rights. There's so much more to the story.

It did occur to me that certainly African-Americans are not underserved in picture books, but those books are almost all about specifically black experiences.

Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.

As an African-American actor, a lot of our stories haven't been told.