Moderator: Beyonce has an on-stage alter ego named Sasha Fierce. It mostly started, I would say, probably 10 years ago and with each year, she just gets progressively more powerful and more in control of her image. I think Beyonce reached her limit and realised that she finally had enough power in the industry where she simply did not have to put up with any of that. Young pop stars have to give all of themselves and withstand all kinds of stupid interviews and stupid questions and misogyny. That’s an interesting choice and more than that, you have to be incredibly powerful to pull it off, especially as a woman and as a black woman. When she does interviews, she controls everything about them. She rarely speaks, she rarely does interviews. She only mediates her public image through image. I also think she’s an interesting businesswoman. This is an edited extract of their conversation.
For Nakkiah, it was ultimate library pal Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series the powerhouse performers that are The Sapphires and Vladimir Nabokov’s thought-provoking Lolita. Roxane chose the ultimate Queen B (aka Beyonce) the fierce Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games trilogy and the casually cool Denise Huxtable played by Lisa Bonet in The Cosby Show. Writers Roxane Gay and Nakkiah Lui were tasked with picking three women from pop culture who had shaped them. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size
