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Elle
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Loved This Book So Much, She Had to ‘Lie Down' After Finishing It
Welcome to Shelf Life, books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you're on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you're here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too. 'I've written essays for about 20 years now, and they are fueled by my intellectual fascinations with culture, history, womanhood, literature, and the origins and meanings of 'race' in this nation,' says Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, whose latest book, an essay collection called Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings , is out now. 'I place 'race' in quotation marks because it doesn't really exist as a biological reality, yet it's a concept that has actual consequences for many in the United States.' After writing five award-winning volumes of poetry, Jeffers published her debut novel, the generation-spanning The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois (which she thought would be a beach read and took 11 years to complete) in 2021. The book was long-listed for the National Book Award and won the National Book Critics Circle Award as well as the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and it earned a spot in Oprah's Book Club in addition to President Barack Obama's annual favorite books list. After the novel's success, Jeffers says, 'finishing a collection of essays seemed a natural progression for my writing journey. But then my mother died, which raised the emotional stakes on what being an intellectual even meant—and revealed how Mama had influenced me as a writer, thinker, and woman. [ Misbehaving at the Crossroads ] greatly changed on the other side of grief.' With the essay collection, Jeffers says she 'wanted to humanize what it means to be a Black woman who holds feminist principles dear. So many times, Black women who struggle against oppression—against patriarchy and racism—are characterized as tough or mean or angry. To call yourself a Black feminist is to elicit confusion: What's a Black feminist anyway? How's that different from being a mainstream feminist? I try to answer those questions in the book and through stories about my life; somehow show that Black feminism also connects with being a utterly vulnerable human being. Yes, I've struggled against these big systems of racism and patriarchy—and yes, I get angry sometimes—but I'm still a tender woman filled with plenty of love. And I wanted to reveal those parts of myself that are frightened or wounded, even as I have tried to move in courageous ways.' The Indiana-born, North Carolina- and Georgia-raised bestselling author earned her undergraduate degree at Talladega College (where her mother, who once taught Alice Walker, was a professor); received her creative writing M.F.A. from the University of Alabama; once met James Baldwin, who knew her father, a poet in the Black Arts Movement; canvassed for Jimmy Carter in 1976; writes in longhand ; is a self-described introvert; runs the Substack ' Critical Thinking 101 '; is a vegetarian and ('slow') runner; and appears in the Stamped from the Beginning Netflix documentary. Good at: research (her poetry collection The Age of Phillis —about Phillis Wheatley Peters, the first African-American author to publish a book of poetry—required 15 years of research); writing more than one book at a time; waking up early naturally . Bad at: housekeeping ; being a holiday person . Fan of: the artist Carrie Mae Weems; the painting 'Mecklenburg Morning' by Romare Bearden; Chaka Khan's NPR Tiny Desk Concert ; Ava DuVernay; 22k gold jewelry; the Alabama sun. Peruse her book recommendations below. The book that: …made me weep uncontrollably: Oh, hands down Ann Patchett 's Bel Canto ! I've read it twice, and the first time, I was so overtaken emotionally with her gorgeous language—and I don't know, some kind of mojo that she has—that I started crying. Then I felt faint and had to lie down for a nap. That is the first time that ever happened to me. …I recommend over and over again: The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010 . That lady sure knew she could work some wisdom and beauty into a poetic line. ...shaped my worldview: In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens by Alice Walker allowed me to see a brilliant Black woman (other than my mother) hold forth on literature and culture and politics. It is an absolutely amazing book. …I swear I'll finish one day: War and Peace by Tolstoy. I read a few pages each year, but it's so long! I know I have my nerve talking about long books, because my first novel is 797 pages! But War and Peace is, like, three times as long as my novel. (In my defense, I did finish Anna Karenina , though.) …I'd pass on to a kid: I have passed on The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin to students of mine. It's inventive, it's courageous in terms of gender depiction, and it's one of those novels that features the wondrous inventions that fans of science fiction love, alongside the character development that fans of literary fiction require. …I last bought: Kyle T. Mays's An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States . I love me a good history book, especially one that can surprise me with information only a handful of folks understood before the book was published. …has a sex scene that will make you blush: My friend Kennedy Ryan sent me the galley of her book Can't Get Enough , which chronicles a romance between two African-American characters. There are three truly naughty scenes in the novel, which I enjoyed not only for—ahem—obvious reasons, but also, I just adore Black folks kissing and hugged up with and heart-loving on each other. There's not a lot of that on television in this country, so at least I can get that from Kennedy's books. Kennedy Ryan Wants Publishing to 'Let Her Cook' …helped me become a better writer: Edward P. Jones All Aunt Hagar's Children . The way that man can work four flashbacks and seven instances of character development into one paragraph only 200 words long is just a miracle. …should be on every college syllabus: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones is a novel that humanizes the United States' carceral crisis. It's told from the point of view of three characters who are affected in different ways by the false imprisonment of a Black man. …I've re-read the most: I have read Toni Morrison's Beloved seven times. It's the most difficult novel I've ever read in terms of structure—so many twists and turns—but I love it so. …I consider literary comfort food: Daddy was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether is a Y.A. novel that I loved as a kid and which I return to whenever I want to revisit why I became a writer. …I never returned to the library (mea culpa): This is so horrible, but my daddy borrowed Ernest J. Gaines's short story collection Bloodline from a library in San Francisco like 60-plus years ago, before I was even born. I have it on my bookshelf right now. I keep saying I should return it, but I'm pretty sure the library has replaced it by now. …makes me feel seen: Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde says all the hardcore Black feminist things that I needed to know as a young woman trying to understand myself in a world that didn't always like me. …features the coolest book jacket: Yellowface by R.F. Kuang must have the coolest—and, possibly, the most courageous—cover I've ever seen. It's political and sly and just gave me all the feels. When I first saw the cover, I exclaimed, 'Hell yeah!' …I asked for one Christmas as a kid: Alex Haley's Roots was the book that I remember asking for as a Christmas gift. I buddy-read that book with my daddy. (However, to keep it completely real, I also asked for a non-book gift: an Easy-Bake Oven, which I never received because Daddy was convinced it emitted radiation! I still get unreasonably irritated whenever women of my age mention they had an Easy-Bake in childhood.) Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be: Librairie Présence Africaine in Paris. It's a Black-owned bookstore that I know my late mother would have loved: she spoke fluent French. I imagine that if I ever make it to heaven, Mama and I will roam the shelves of that bookstore and I'll read snippets of books aloud to her, like I used to as a little girl. The literary organization/charity I support: Kweli Journal has been described as The Paris Review for writers of color. The founder and executive director Laura Pegram is a tireless literary citizen. I give a small donation every month to Kweli, and then, whenever I get a little extra money, I always give some more. 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Elle
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Megan Abbott Reveals the ‘Deranged' Book That Nevertheless ‘Changed My Life'
Welcome to Shelf Life, books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you're on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you're here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too. Megan Abbott's 13th and latest novel, El Dorado Drive , is a riveting thriller centering suburban women and their pyramid schemes—so perhaps it should come as no surprise that the book's already been optioned for an A24 television series. 'Like Tupperware or Mary Kay in the past, [modern pyramid schemes] promise so much, the American Dream within reach,' Abbott says. 'I began imagining how a trio of sisters could get drawn into it and how dangerous it could become. Do these women know when they've crossed a line into criminal activity, and what are they willing to do to keep going?' With El Dorado Drive , 'I wanted to write about women and money,' she says. 'So much of our life is ruled by money and, often, anxieties over money—it reveals so much about ourselves, our dreams and fears, pressures and fantasies.' The El Dorado Drive adaptation will be far from Abbott's first time translating books to the screen. Abbott co-developed the USA Network series Dare Me , based on her mystery set in the cutthroat world of cheerleading; is currently writing and executive producing (along with Taffy Brodesser-Akner) the Lionsgate psychological thriller series Here in the Dark , based on Alexis Soloski's book of the same name ; is co-writing, with author Laura Lippman, Lippman's P.I. Tess Monaghan series; and is also working on adapting Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest for A24/Netflix. The Detroit-born, New York-based bestselling and Edgar-award-winning author was named 'Most Likely to Succeed' in high school; went to the University of Michigan before earning her Ph.D. in English and American literature from New York University; turned her dissertation into her first book, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir ); edited the female noir anthology A Hell of a Woman ; worked as a grant writer for the East Harlem nonprofit Union Settlement; is superstitious; is inspired by photographers, including Sally Mann, William Eggleston, and Gordon Parks, among many others; and lives in an apartment overlooking the Long Island Rail Road. 'It's a cliché, but I do believe books are an empathy machine, and I want to write (and read) about women who may, from the outside, appear troubled, unlikeable, and difficult,' she says. 'I want to be the defense attorney for all my characters, to try to show why they do what they do, what made them who they are.' Good at: writing about female friendship dynamics; owning tchotchkes and multitasking ; hula hooping. Bad at: ballet; all sports; understanding crystals; sleeping. Likes: movies, including Blue Velvet , Dressed to Kill , Some Like It Hot , and Double Indemnity ; mid-century modern design; Film Forum; pulp fiction; Forest Hills Station House and Natural Market in her neighborhood; Nick Cave's music and newsletter, 'The Red Hand Files'; 'Gen X queens' Kim Deal and Kim Gordon; Real Housewives of New York . Writing essentials: sunlight; Orbit peppermint gum; music. Collects: chalkware; first editions; vintage carnival prizes. Peruse her book recommendations below. The book that…: …made me weep uncontrollably: Denis Johnson's Angels , which starts as a wild road trip tale and turns into something heartbreaking, with some deep truths about the American Dream and those left behind: the desperate and dispossessed. ...shaped my worldview: Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem , which seemed to reveal dark, haunting truths about America that, as a 20-year-old, I'd only guessed at before. ...I swear I'll finish one day: George Eliot's Middlemarch . But will I? ...I read in one sitting; it was that good: James M. Cain's Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice , both first-personal confessional crime novels that seem to leap from the page. …made me laugh out loud: Charles Portis's The Dog of the South , or any Charles Portis novel. One of the most idiosyncratic and thrilling voices in American literature. …should be on every college syllabus: Nella Larsen's Harlem Renaissance novel, Passing , a sly, seductive tale that tackles far larger issues. ...I've re-read the most: Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon . I can't help myself. ...has the best opening line: Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier : 'This is the saddest story I have ever heard.' …changed my life: Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry's Helter Skelter , which sounds deranged, but I firmly believe that it and Joe McGinniss's Fatal Vision —both extremely flawed books—inspired at least two generations of crime novelists to find their craft. …has a sex scene that will make you blush: Susanna Moore's In the Cut , which left first-degree burns on my fingertips (or so it felt). …sealed a friendship: Jack Pendarvis's Your Body is Changing , which led to a mutual correspondence and now 20 years of friendship and a longstanding two-person book club. …is a master class on dialogue: Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, where every line sings. …broke my heart: Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence , which gains power as we accumulate experience and heartbreaks. …everyone should read: Lucy Sante's exquisite memoir, I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition . …currently sits on my nightstand: Patricia Highsmith's Ripley Under Water . I've been re-reading all the Ripley novels in sequence and continue to marvel at her creation. Bonus question: If I could live in any library or bookstore in the world, it would be: John K. King Used & Rare Books in Detroit, Michigan—more than a million books in an abandoned glove factory—what more could you want? Now 32% Off Credit: Harper Perennial Now 41% Off Credit: Picador Modern Classics Now 41% Off Credit: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Now 24% Off Credit: Vintage Now 35% Off Credit: The Overlook Press Now 18% Off Credit: Dover Publications Credit: Straight Arrow Books Credit: Wordsworth Editions Ltd Now 36% Off Credit: W. W. Norton & Company Now 31% Off Credit: Berkley Now 23% Off Credit: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Now 53% Off Credit: Penguin Press Credit: W. W. Norton & Company
Elle
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
Bethenny Frankel Got Her First Job to Save Money for a House Party
Every item on this page was chosen by an ELLE editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy. In series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke to Bethenny Frankel, one of the O.G. Real Housewives of New York, who spun her on-screen popularity into a business empire. After founding Skinnygirl, which started as a line of guilt-free cocktail mixers, in 2009, Frankel sold the company for a reported $100 million in 2011. (Though, she still brings in seven figures annually from Skinnygirl licensing, according to the brand.) In 2017, she founded BStrong, a disaster relief initiative that has raised over $400 million to date for causes, including helping communities recover from Hurricane Helene and the Maui and L.A. wildfires. Over the last several years, Frankel has exploded on TikTok and Instagram for her unfiltered product reviews and no-holds-barred opinions. She also hosts her own podcast, Just B with Bethenny Frankel. Below, the reality TV star talks about the words she lives by, the on-brand reason she got her first job, and her all-too-relatable feelings towards alarm clocks. My first job I worked at a bakery in high school, and truthfully, I was working there to save up money to have a party at my house. My worst job My worst job was a PR company in L.A. where I had to lick envelopes for invitations. [This woman] scolded me for being on a personal phone call, which I certainly didn't understand. You don't need to have a brain to stuff envelopes. The best career advice I've received Don't believe the love; don't believe the hate. Don't buy into either. How many alarms I set in the morning Alarms? Zero. Negative zero. They're so jarring. Even with my daughter, if she's sleeping late, I'm letting her sleep late. I believe the body needs to sleep until the body needs to sleep. My beauty essentials It's not about the brands; it's about the steps. It's about consistently cleansing, only wearing makeup when completely critical or being paid, exfoliating. We spend our 20s and 30s stripping our skin when really we should be feeding our skin—nourishing and layering the skin versus what young girls all try to do, which is dry it out. The biggest lesson I've learned Try to please everybody, and you end up pleasing nobody. And if it were easy, everybody would do it. That's the truth. My go-to power outfit I don't really do that, because I'm such a strong personality. It's too much. My entire wardrobe in New York City is all black and severe. I don't really wear power clothes anymore. I don't need them. My ultimate career philosophy Just do it. Never listen to people that tell you it can't happen. I have 10 very lucrative, seven-figure businesses, and for each one of them, I was told no, it couldn't happen. I'm building the plane while I'm flying it. If I come up with a cocktail, and I like it, and people respond to it in that moment, I'm taking that to the next level. If I do something that's working, I lean into that. Why I review products on my social media Many people, even if they don't like me, believe me. A lot of them don't like me because I'm telling the truth. It's not performative; I love the find. I love a treasure hunt. And I'm aware that I am changing lives for small businesses. Big brands started as small brands! You have no idea how many people have reached out to say that their lives changed [after I posted about them]. It's amazing. It's a game-changer. But then sometimes I say something, and it could change your business in the opposite direction, but I don't think that's bad. I'm saving them money, because they're going to spend so much thinking they're great, because no one tells a new entrepreneur they suck. They go out there and spend all this money betting on themselves, and it's not going to hold up. It's going to cost them so much more in the long run. If I don't like it, what am I going to do? You enter at your own risk. You send it here, and you want me to review it, and I can decide to do what I want. The customer wins because the customer is getting an honest review. The brand wins because they are getting the business, or the brand wins because they're getting real advice. My proudest career moment Being on the cover of Forbes. Or, I mean, Sports Illustrated is up there right now.... How I maintain a work-life balance The people around me say to me that I take care of myself. Danielle [La Testa], who works with me, always says, 'You give your body what it needs.' I think I just self-regulate. I get very activated, very stressed. I feel myself grinding my teeth, then I get a massage, or I take a bath. Or I take a walk. It's a lot of highs and lows, but I very much help myself regulate. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Susan Choi Recommends a Book So Engrossing It Made Her (Almost) Lose Her Luggage
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Welcome to Shelf Life, books column, in which authors share their most memorable reads. Whether you're on the hunt for a book to console you, move you profoundly, or make you laugh, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series, who, like you (since you're here), love books. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too. What began as a short story in The New Yorker is now Susan Choi's sixth and latest novel, Flashlight, about a man who goes missing—and the resulting trauma for his family. Like the family in the book, Choi lived in Japan for a short period during her childhood. (Nor is this the first time she's shared autobiographical details with her characters: Her father was a math professor, like a character in 2003's A Person of Interest; she went to graduate school, the setting of 2013's My Education; and she attended a theater program in high school, as do the protagonists in 2019's National Book Award-winning Trust Exercise, for which she wrote at least 3 different endings.) Her second novel, 2004's American Woman, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and adapted into a film, and she has also written a children's book, Camp Tiger. Choi teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, yet one literary goal remains elusive: 'Trying to read 50 books a year,' she says. 'I've never achieved the goal and some years I don't even come close, but I love trying.' The Indiana-born, Texas-raised, New York-based bestselling author studied literature at Yale University; was once fired from a literary agency for being too much of a 'literary snob'; was a fact-checker at The New Yorker and co-edited Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker with editor David Remnick; won an ASME Award for Fiction for 'The Whale Mother' in Harper's Magazine; and has two sons. Likes: theater; fabric stores; kintsugi; the Fort Greene Park Greenmarket; savory buns; flowers. Dislikes: being on stage; low-hovering helicopters. Good at: rocking her gray hair. Bad at: cleaning menorahs; coming up with book titles. Scroll through the reads she recommends below. It's not exactly a missed-the-train moment, but I was re-reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov while waiting on a train platform [once], and when the train pulled in I stood up, still reading, boarded the train, still reading, and sat down, still reading…until at some point, after the train pulled away, I realized that I had left my luggage on the platform. Philip Roth's Everyman. I never would have thought a novel about the bodily decline and eventual death of a hyper-masculine Jewish guy who mistreats many of the women in his life—a lot like Philip Roth—could make me literally heave-sob at the end. But this is why Roth is such an incredible writer: He makes us feel enormous compassion for people we don't even like. Jenny Erpenbeck's Visitation, which kaleidoscopically compresses the stormy history of 20th-century Germany into barely a hundred pages, while holding the focus steady on a single plot of land. It's one of those books that makes you want to write. All of Proust. Or even just some decent amount of Proust. I love the prose but also find it so exquisite it's almost unbearable to continue reading for any length of time, at least for me, which makes me feel like a total failure as a reader. I might have to set aside a year of my life just to read Proust. Sarah Moss's Ghost Wall is impossible to put down, and it's also so tensely coiled from the very beginning that reading it I sometimes forgot to breathe! In some ways it's a 'small' story—about a girl and her parents doing a crazy-seeming reenactment of prehistoric life in the English countryside—but then it turns out to be about the biggest things, like what it means to be a people, or a nation, or even human. Rachel Khong's Real Americans, which I am so riveted by that as soon as I finish these questions, I'm picking it back up. It's a story about three people who, despite how deeply they feel for each other—and how deeply we feel for them—cannot manage to be a family. My heart is already half-broken and I'm only halfway through it. Paul Beatty's The Sellout. I was sitting on the beach in Maui (the one time I have ever been to Maui), reading that book instead of swimming, and a stranger came up to me to ask what it was because apparently I was laughing so hard I'd attracted general attention. In Francisco Goldman's The Ordinary Seaman, two young guerilla fighters, boy and girl, fall madly in love and start having trysts in the back of an ambulance. The girl also has a pet squirrel that she's been carrying around in her bra, and, during the trysts, the squirrel runs frantically around the back of the ambulance. These are some of the funniest, wildest, most heartfelt sex scenes ever put on paper. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I read it every few years because it feels new every time and, at the same time, it feels so familiar, like returning to a favorite place. I love every single sentence in it, even the sentences that are totally over-the-top (and there are a lot of them!) because they remind me that Fitzgerald was actually a fallible human being, capable of writing very over-the-top sentences sometimes. Sigrid Nunez's A Feather on the Breath of God shocked me the first time I read it because it really felt like the book was looking at me, like it knew exactly who I was. The protagonist has, like me, a real culture-clash background, and up to the point in my life when I read the book—the '90s—I'd never encountered that in fiction, so it was very emotional when I finally did. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie. Just read it. You'll thank me. Renee Gladman is one of my absolute favorite living writers/artists, yet I was totally unaware of her until maybe six years ago when I was recommended her work by an employee—I am so sorry I don't know his name—at my local indie bookstore. Now it feels unimaginable to me that I ever lived my life without Renee Gladman! Everything by Ali Smith, and Ali Smith herself. She is such a brilliant, compassionate, elating observer of us humans and the strange things we do. The London Library. A friend who's a member showed it to me a few years ago, and I never wanted to leave. Maybe they'll set up a hammock for me! PEN America, because they support freedom of expression, which none of us can take for granted anymore.$14.40 at at at at at at at at at at You Might Also Like The 15 Best Organic And Clean Shampoos For Any And All Hair Types 100 Gifts That Are $50 Or Under (And Look Way More Expensive Than They Actually Are)
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sabrina Elba on Why She's Excited for Motherhood Someday
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." In series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke with Sabrina Elba, a model, entrepreneur, and Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations International Fund for Agricultural Development. Elba works with IFAD in African countries like Kenya, Zambia, and Egypt, helping farmers, combating hunger, and working on climate change initiatives. She also owns S'Able Labs, a skin care company, and recently partnered with Calvin Klein for their Eternity Amber Essence campaign, where she posed alongside her husband, Idris Elba. Here, she talks about her experience shooting that campaign (featuring the first fragrance she ever bought), how her mom has influenced her advocacy work, and why she's looking forward to someday becoming a mother herself. I got approached [by law enforcement] when I was 15 to go to gas stations and ask for cigarettes. If they would sell them to me—illegally, because I was younger—they'd be in trouble. So I was keeping the streets safe for my fellow young people. They wouldn't be able to buy cigarettes. I've always looked a bit older, because I'm tall, so I got away with it really easily. I remember thinking, 'Oh, I could be a detective. I'm really good at getting people.' I never thought I would get into entrepreneurship when I was younger. I am thankful that I've married someone who's opened my blinders a bit and shown me a wider view of what I could do. Starting a beauty business has been such a fruitful thing for me over the past couple of years. One of the reasons I was excited to work with Calvin Klein is because I'm getting to learn so much about the beauty industry. It has been like a master class to see the brand maintain an iconic fragrance by [remaining ] genuine and true to its original roots. When I moved to London, I took up a job in public relations. It was purpose PR, so we were doing PR for NGOs and charities. As an activist, it was great to see what other NGOs were doing in terms of strategy. But I did not enjoy sitting in an office for that long. I like a more dynamic work-life balance—being able to work while I'm away, while I travel, taking a laptop and going. When I was in PR, I was stuck in the office 9-5 every day. I'm really excited about motherhood. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and I watched in awe as she raised five kids as a single mother. I think motherhood is something that should be taken seriously. I'm really excited to embark on that journey. It's not necessarily a job, but that's something I'm excited to do in terms of a life change. You need to understand every part of your business. For me, numbers aren't necessarily my thing, and trying to understand [that] side of the business wasn't fun, but I'm glad that I approached it with curiosity. Do not be afraid to ask questions. I'm so thankful there's no such thing as a stupid question. Ask, ask, ask. It's really important to make sure that you ask if you don't understand something. Fake it till you make it. I need to understand. I need to learn. I'm a trained esthetician now, so I understand skin better. I'm not a 'fake it till you make it' person. I would literally pass out from anxiety. My mom is a big part of the reason I do advocacy. She left Somalia when she was quite young and watched her home country fall apart on TV. It was a super frustrating and vulnerable position to be in, to feel like she couldn't help. She always told us, 'Africa is this amazing place. I need to go back and try to repair things.' She's had a 'give back' mentality that has bled into everything I do. Agriculture is a great way to uplift rural people through investment, not aid. It's about giving them a means to take care of themselves and a path of economic independence. It allows people to fight back against failed states, climate conflicts, or climate change. In general, [it also helps people] be able to make ends meet, and resist. I'm always trying to make the world a better place for the little girl my mom was. To able to work with a fragrance that's so nostalgic for me—it's the first fragrance I purchased, and I watched Christy [Turlington] be the face of it growing up—is an absolute honor. One thing I've always loved about Calvin Klein is they're not afraid to show every kind of love. Being able to show our authentic connection in that shoot was such a beautiful experience. It wasn't asking us to be anything but ourselves. It's really nice to see Black love showcased the way that Calvin Klein has done it. I wake up early. I call my family who live on the west coast of Canada. I love to work out with my husband, and do my skin care routine. Getting dressed is a huge part of my day. It just sets my mood. I love fashion. I love accessories. Fragrance really sets my mood, too. I'm someone who has quite an extensive morning routine, so I wake up early to get in all the things that I want. As soon as it's 8 P.M., I'm not doing anything, so I've got to get it all done in the morning. There's a bit of a false narrative around telling young women that they can do it all. You should try to do it all, but that involves sacrifice. I've had to accept that in my life. I've taken a step back from that pressure of trying to do it all. If I can't get everything done, I can't, but I try to prioritize and take things day by day. Being this busy means that I've had to make some sacrifices along the way. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. 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