My Lore & Why I Write For Black Girls:My So Called Life
Republished from the February 2026 Issue of my newsletter, Kelis Wrote It!.
The Epigraph & Angela Chance (again)
Recently, Claire Danes was a guest on one of my favorite podcasts, Amy Poehler’s Good Hang. Here’s the link to that episode. They spend some time talking about Claire’s role as Angela Chase in the iconic teen drama series My So Called Life. I’ve talked (for decades) about seeing Angela Chase when the show aired when I was in high school and seeing myself in a character (of any race) on TV for the first time. I had Rudy from The Cosby Show, but I was too busy wanting all her clothes, and her bedroom furniture and her dad to find her relatable. When I was older, Denise Huxtable represented the insecure, unmotivated, wandering soul, but again, the clothes and the dad… I was fifteen or sixteen when I saw the first episode of My So Called Life and heard Angela Chase, another fifteen or sixteen year-old, in voice-over, hanging on to experiences and people that she’s kind of disconnected from in hopes of feeling like a normal teenager, which what even was that really… dressed… like… me. Riveted. Automatic. Then she said something that summed up my entire problem with my fifteen or sixteen years of existence:
“Things were getting to me— just how people are. How they always expect you to be a certain way.”
Then she decided to dye her hair and just be different, and my whole life changed. As a child who perpetually felt out of place on Earth, I was locked in. AND SHE GOT HER CRUSH (although as a teenager the slackers turned me off so I didn’t relate, but Jordan Cattalano is CUTE so I gave her a pass)! My teenage mind was blown. The show and Angela’s voice were honest and true to the lives of teenagers. Unlike the rich, beautiful, adult-drama teen shows that would follow after its one and only season. But I only needed the one season to feel seen. I had never heard anyone else verbalize my thoughts about so many things until I saw that show. Winnie Holzman created My So Called Life and also wrote the Wicked play and clearly understands and tells the stories of teenage girls at the deepest, highest and purest levels and I’m obsessulated.
The main character in my upcoming novel is a girl who use to know herself, but life started coming at her hard and her identity got lost in the shuffle. To cope, she decides to be exactly who everyone around her expects her to be. It’s no spoiler to tell you that that decision does not give what she expects it to be giving.
I had outlined the novel and started drafting the opening scene when my mind rushed to a specific scene in My So Called Life that encompasses my main character’s daily battle. I looked for screenshots of the scene but couldn’t find one with the entire quote captioned so I saved a cute still from a totally different scene and added the full quote in Canva. Here’s the quote I chose for one of the epigraphs (yes there are two— I don’t want to spoil everything for those of you who look forward to discovering epigraphs in the front pages of novels):
“It just seems like you agree to have a certain personality... just to make things easier for everyone. But when you think about it... how do you even know it's you?"
I came of age in the 90s when there were very few stories about Black girls who were not strong, or not blissful, or not ambitious. But there were so many stories (mostly films) about White girls grappling with basic teen life and family dysfunction and trying to figure themselves out. Moesha and all the Black girls in the shows on the UPN network were fierce and seemed to know how they fit in their worlds. I grew up in a Black Christian culture where we were told who we were and being sad was for White girls or people who didn’t know Jesus. So I clung to Angela Chase (and Molly Ringwald’s characters before her, which I talk about in the Life Edit section of my newsletter).
In the 90s, the contemporary young adult novel space was close to non-existent compared to what it would become and I was reading adult contemporary fiction at the time. I had no business reading Terry McMillan in high school. Now, I write books that my teenage self needed. I write for all girls who need to hear their voices and see their reflections in books about them. I write because of Black girls.
Can’t wait to share the cover and more details about my next novel in March! My newsletter followers will get the cover reveal first. It’ll drop before the March newsletter, not in lieu of it. If you haven’t already, click here to subscribe to Kelis Wrote It! for exclusive updates and more of my ramblings on the last Sunday night of every month. Missed the first two? No worries— past issues are archived at the bottom of each new issue.