00:05I didn't know that I had been waiting my whole life to feel this solid. In this
00:13moment when I'm supposed to disappear, this is when I want to bust through the
00:18most. I think it's very hard for society to believe that young people have the
00:28intelligence and the talent and the capability to actually change the
00:32culture. And we look at young athletes and we look at young musicians and we
00:37take their talent from them but we aren't really willing to trust their
00:41minds. Woman, writer, activist, grown-ass woman. I am a woman, writer, activist, and I am too young for
00:56nothing. Activism means love and action, speaking out about the injustices in the
01:04world, putting your body on the line to create the change that you want. If you
01:11call it out, you're an activist. I just began talking about the invisibility or
01:18the hypersexuality of black and brown girls. I was just telling the truth and
01:23they called me an activist. When I was eight years old, I began getting bullied.
01:32Writing the things that terrified me to write, that was the way I was able to not
01:38just cope with what I had gone through but heal my wounds. Pain can be a source of
01:45power. For generations, the amount of oppression and pressure and bullshit and
01:52violence that women of color have had to endure. That pain, that current pain, the
01:58pain of my grandmother, the pain of my mother, the pain of their mothers have
02:03given me me. For all of those years until my publisher gave me a shot, people over and
02:11over adults in so many industries just told me that because of my age, because of
02:16my youth, I didn't know what I was talking about. But literally, my book is
02:20written by a teen for other teenagers.
02:24You inspire me as a writer. It's impressive no matter what. It's not
02:27impressive for your age. I think this for your age notion is a really important
02:33distinction. It's using age as a weapon. This context around age is to make other
02:40people comfortable. The hardest word for me to hear is... Out of touch. Naive. Old.
02:50Entitled. Irrelevant. It is robbing the world to say that we don't matter. At this
03:02point where I feel the most powerful, to then be called irrelevant? Like, I am the
03:10most relevant I have ever been in my life.
03:16I feel frustrated because I think as Millennials, the gifts that we've been
03:21given being born in this time, we've used to create positive change for this
03:26global community that we are all a part of. I think it's really scary for society to
03:32trust the minds of young people because maybe they are dangerous. But really,
03:36they're brilliant and brave. It felt like we could connect at a human level
03:43regardless of the difference in years. Imagine if you brought the energy, the
03:49innovation, the flyness of young women and connect that with the wisdom, the
03:55receipts, the dopeness, the experience of older women. We could checkmate
04:02patriarchy. We could checkmate, you know, sexism and racism but we have been
04:08cultured not to do that. We've been cultured to be distracted and not be
04:13directed.
04:16Be you in your moment. Be you in your time. I'm still doing this in service of
04:21those same black and brown girls and all the other young women behind me. I want
04:26to inspire them to know that beyond 20, beyond 30, beyond 40, beyond 50, there's
04:32just new life, more excitement, more clarity, more power, more power.
04:39For more information, please visit www.fema.org.au.au.au.
