Grateful Okay?! A Pinned Letter to Issa Rae

I couldn’t figure out any other way to start out this letter than from the beginning. In 2011 an awkward, forensics performing, black girl was transitioning to high school for the first time. Her environments were heavily white and the few black circles that were “acceptable”, didn’t necessarily align with who that awkward black girl was. She wasn’t athletic, she wasn’t cool, and for all accounts, she was alone.

Your assumptions are correct. That awkward black girl was me. Like many other black girls I turned to media as a distraction from the struggles of the real world. I turned to reading and writing. My poetry progressed to prose, imagination to short stories, and fantasies to film.

Years progressed and before I knew it I was in middle of my junior year of high school. I had been battling with what I wanted to do career wise and where. I was at the point where the world was asking me what was my next 4 years going to look like. During that time I had fallen in and out of desire of pursuing law. This was largely being manipulated by the deaths of young black boys and girls my age slain by police. I became angry.

Angry at what was I was seeing everyday. What I was forced to discuss in newspaper meetings and in debate practices. Angry at the lack of escapism on television for me. So I wrote and I wrote. I wrote worlds in which I lived. I wrote people that I loved. I wrote the chaos I experienced. Then my grandmother passed and I became lost.

Lost in world winds of emotions. Grappling for a sense of peace. Then a classmate out of nowhere asked me if I heard of Issa Rae. He referred me to The Mis-Adventures of An Awkward Black Girl. I was like “is this white boy really going to refer me to a black show just because I’m black?” I wrote that mug down though.

I had come home and went on my discovery path of the Awkward Black Girl. By the next day I had watched every episode possible of the web series, researched everything Issa did, and what was next.

Awkward Black Girl reminded me “oh there’s other women who think like me too” I connected with the cringed moments. I felt seen in J’s stifled frustration. I felt heard when J had to maneuver through white spaces.

Awkward Black Girl put me on a discovery path of other independent black filmmakers. Filmmakers with small and large budgets putting things on the web that gave access to little black girls in the Midwest like me. I became inspired.

My inspiration was the confirmation of what I wanted to do as I crawled into adulthood. I wanted to be a director-writer. I thought that’s it. I have everything figured out and it should be easier from here. I was hella wrong.

I started college and wondered why I was still struggling. I felt miles behind the white boys in my classes that had been making films since high school. I still wasn’t sure who I was becoming and love felt like a far out thing.

Come my sophomore year of college my friends and I huddled together in the common area of our dorm and watched the Insecure premiere. We burst into wild laughter at the authenticity and relatability. We compared each other to certain characters. We fantasized about what was to come in the next episode. We repeated this cycle every Sunday religiously.

When my friendships had it’s ups and downs, when I wallowed in unhealthy relationships, when I lacked confidence in my dreams, and when depression sometimes loomed, Insecure followed me through it.

Insecure reminded me struggling was actually easy. It was the growing past the struggle that was hard. The growing was understanding that some relationships end, some doors close, and being vocal about what you want can take time. And that’s okay. That’s life.

In ten years Issa has shifted the way television looks. She reintroduced us to the idea working laterally versus networking vertically. She’s confirmed how rewarding being your authentic self can be. Issa is the CEO of rooting for everyone black.

The Insecure ending confirmed the end of one era but the start of many more to come. One featuring more black creatives like myself, so I’m simply grateful, okay?!