Maybe then, Milano reasoned, the world would understand the magnitude of the issue.
She urged would-be tweeters to include the words me too in their posts.
SELF: Why this book now?
Burke:I look at it as overdue.
This was 2017, and they sought a celebrity memoir kind of thing.
And I was not interested in that.
It was important to get it right.
I wanted my first book to be about survival.
People in the industry were like, No, you have to write a memoir first.
And I thought I needed to live more life.
The beginning of the book takes us into that gripping scene of that morning when the hashtag goes viral.
You panic because the outpouring of responses is so huge, so unmanageable, and youre not ready.
You agonize because you dont want to be written out of the story.
Do you still feel that fear of erasure?
I have a whole different perspective about that now.
I can’t be erased from my calling, my assignment, my story.
What the world has come to know as hashtag #MeToo is not my invention.
There’s a way that having high visibility will make you believe that high visibility is the goal.
It makes people pay attention to your message.
So it does yield something.
How do we narrow that empathy gap?
I’m trying to chip away at that all the time.
And I feel like we have to start inside the community and work our way out.
As we get older, we forget.
Why do we lose that connection to Black girls?
It’s just too easy.
I have the hardest time myself trying to do that work because it’s exhausting.
What are healthy and nonpunitive ways to protect and empower Black girls and women?
When people talk about youth failing forward, its typically white youth.
And we just didn’t get a chance.
I saw it in the schools when I would go and talk to these guidance counselors.
They would be resolved already that these kids were done for.
This is middle school.
This is sixth and seventh grade.
We need a space to try and fail.
We need a space to experiment.
I remember when my daughter was in high school and starting to date.
We joke about this now because they’re polyamorous.
But I forbid them to be in exclusive relationships in high school, said you have to actually date.
This was about gender as well.
I didn’t care.
We don’t give that to Black girls enough.
We don’t allow them that kind of space and the guidance in that space.
That’s what’s happening in your body.
Why was the wordrapehard to say for you?
Once you say the word, all of the things that come with it become real.
Obviously, Im in a completely different place now.
Where do you see yourself in the scope of history?
There will be a time when the #MeToo hashtag and movement may not feel so present.
I love the study of [social justice] movement, and I see movement as a continuum.
One of the saddest things to me in this moment is that people have broken up the continuum.
They know Dr. King or Malcolm X and Rosa Parks, these big, looming names.
I was very much informed by [organizing in those times].
I have to ask you a somewhat silly question: Whats your superpower?
My superpower is being rational.
So how does that work when dealing with a public that doesnt believe things that are actually indisputable?
I dont necessarily think of rationality when I think of the American public.
When things happen and people are frantic, my mind immediately goes to: Does this make sense?
This doesn’t make sense.
We need to calm down, y’all, because this probably is not what’s happening.
What you think has happened is probably not happening.
And people get irritated.
But Im a Virgo.
I knew bits and pieces of your story, but I was intrigued by your youthful flirtation with Catholicism.
That voice tells you to do things, that youre going to leave Selma, for example.
Did you pause and think twice about adding those things to the book?
In our society, many people are discouraged from hearing those voicesor talking about hearing them.
I don’t hear a lot of talk about faith and spirituality in #MeToo.
I’m like, Oh, I haven’t been in church in forever.
And there was so much that was led by my faith that I could not leave it out.
Sometimes in movement spaces, theres a lot of judgment about being Christian.
There’s so many people on the right who use Christianity to justify their hatred and bigotry.
That’s not the God I serve, and that’s not the way I think about being Christian.
It’s funny you brought that up.
Nobody’s asked me that question at all.
God has made us big enough that we can take in joy and we can take in pain.
We can manage both of those things and not let one overwhelm the other.
And, in fact, they sort of mitigate each other, right?
I have evidence that it’s not always going to be that way because I remember the joy.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
