Sexism, colorism, colorism, colonialism, so many isms that impact our lives and are often written about in ways that are meant to keep us out rather than to bring us in.

That is part of what Briska Dorcas, Mojica Rodriguez, is reckoning with in her new book

for brown girls with sharp edges and tender hearts, a love letter to women of color.

And by reckon, I mean breaking down in the most relatable of ways how these forces have shaped her life,

who she is, and her pursuit of freedom.

Prisca, I want to start by asking you to tell me about your sharp edges, your tender heart,

and how you arrived at the title of this book.

So I have a book where the quote comes from. So let me pull it because I don't want to butcher it.

So this is Gloria Naylor and it's Women on Brewster Street. And before she starts the book

to describe the women she's about to talk about, she says,

they were hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased these women of Brewster Street.

And I read this in 2012, and I obsessed. Because the rest of you cannot see it,

that page has more highlighting and scribbling on it that it does printed words from the publisher.

Yeah. And I just like have always connected with that. When I write about even myself, like usually when I'm not still hiding from COVID, my nails are long and I wear acrylics. I wear heels. I'm not a casual sneakers girl. I am very high femme and I show up high femme in all places. And so I have physical sharp edges that I talk about.

Like my tacon is thicken up to destroy you. Like there's a lot of poetry in my sharp edges that I've

always leaned on because I connected with that sentence, the hard edged and soft centered.

Like nobody acknowledges how a lot of us who are a little bit bitbittier and a little bit sharper,

it comes from protecting all of the soft stuff that we have inside, that we haven't been

encouraged to nurture.

Not allowed to make me cry this early in the interview, but he's got.

You dedicate your book to difficult daughters. In which ways were you yourself a difficult daughter? I was called La Tocadita Al Mal,

like all my life by my mother. So I was like the black sheep a lot.

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