Whether representations of violence can help to rectify the unjust treatment of the oppressed is a familiar topic of debate, but our discussions focus too much on the intention of the creator and not enough on the effect on viewers.
The truth of any good tale is the thing that makes it art. Without truth, art’s power to change the way we see things fails in the hands of the artists and remains, then, merely words on a page.
"The intersections of my identity became points of confusion for me: I was Black like the people I was seeing, but I wasn’t African. I did not even know if I should call myself African-American or if I was being seen as just American, or if it mattered."