Ava DuVernay’s Speech at Glamour ’s 2019 Women of the Year Awards Must Be Read

Ava DuVernay (of course) delivered an incredible, moving speech when she accepted her Glamour 2019 Women of the Year award at Alice Tully Hall in New York on Monday, November 11.

Niecy Nash, who starred in DuVernay’s Netflix limited series When They See Us, put it best when she presented the director with her award: “Ava DuVernay affirms you and assures you; she validates your choices as an artist. She makes each actor feel like you’re her favorite—‘Wait, she likes them that much, too?’ She is indeed that gorgeous dreadlocked woman we know, in the gowns, on the red carpet, but her sweet spot is on the couch, eating Pinkberry—absolutely with toppings."

“At the core, we are two girls straight out of Compton, trying to use our talents to be of service to the world,” Nash continued. “Through her production company, Array, Ava creates opportunities for underrepresented storytellers, like a 50% female production crew on her latest series, Cherish the Day. Her goal for When They See Us wasn’t, ‘Let me tell a story that will be critically acclaimed, so I can be the industry darling.’ It was, ‘Let me tell a story about the pain that people have suffered. Let me shine a light of truth.&apos Now that light is shining. And because she’s smart, she made sure the series was critically acclaimed too. Because the size of that light means more people will see. I am blessed to know Ava as an artist and a friend. I’m double dipping. Normally I don’t advocate jealousy but I’m saying, if you are jealous of me, rightfully so. Because what the rest of the world sees in her art, I see in her heart."

In her interview for Glamour’s 2019 Women of the Year profile, DuVernay spoke about what success means to her. “I am trying to disrupt systems—systems that we in this country take as gospel. We’re born into them. We abide by their rules without interrogating what the rules are meant to do, who they’re meant to serve. And you can’t disrupt what you don’t understand," she said. "But once you understand, perhaps you engage with these things differently, no matter who you are. Perhaps you don’t assume that, because it’s a longstanding institution, it is right and fair, and you interrogate for yourself what you’ve been taught and told, and you learn to relearn for yourself.”

DuVernay elaborated on the power of interrogating those systems on stage. Read her full speech below.

Thank you to Glamour, Sam and the whole team. Everyone involved with inviting and including me here tonight.

I got a chance today on the invitation of my dear friend Sarah Elizabeth Lewis to see a public art installation that currently sits in Times Square by the great artist Kehinde Wiley called Rumors of War. It’s a bronze sculpture of massive scale that reimagines monuments. Usually made in the likeness of white men - many of whom had a demonstrated history of white supremacy. It reimagines these pieces in the likeness of a black man in a horse valiantly riding forward with his hoodie and Nikes on. It asserts the presence of excellence - in a new likeness.

As I was walking away from Times Square with Sarah and Kehinde and our friend Brian today a woman stopped me to tell me she loved Queen Sugar and all the women directors who make the show and that she’s read about us achieving in gender parity on our upcoming show Cherish The Day. I thanked her for her warmth and support. Then she leaned into me and said something that hit me in my heart. She said “Keep bringing the truth with you. And the truth is, you are excellent.”

I then I went my way and she went hers. But I kept thinking of this woman and these words.

“Keep bringing the truth with you. And the truth is, you are excellent.”

Her encouragement to me speak to thoughts I’ve had lately about inclusion. And my truth within it. What it means to me. Does it mean enough. How can we take it further.

Inclusion is about creating a seat at the table for all of us. Pulling up a chair for those left out. It denotes an absence being remedied.

I’ve started to wonder about that. So much of our conversation as women is about the table needing the chair for us, the glass ceiling we must break, the door we are going to go through and hold open for others. I believe in all of that.

“My truth is that I don’t want a chair at the table or even three or even half. I want the table to be rebuilt in my likeness.”

I also believe in making our own doors, disrupting all systems built in such a way that inclusion is even needed in the first place.

My truth is I don’t want a chair at the table. Or even three or even half anymore. I want the table to be rebuilt. In my likeness. And in the likeness of others long forced out of the room.

But the woman I met today challenges this notion even further.

“Keep bringing the truth with you. And the truth is, you are excellent.”

Because once we get the seat at the table or rebuild the thing or decide we don’t even want tables anymore at all! Whatever the future our forward movement holds - once we get there...

Are we going to be excellent?

How does that happen if we’ve spent so much energy just trying to get there. To make the space.

And if we are excellent. Is it for us? Or is it to prove something to the folks who left us out in the first place.

I ask myself the question tonight and you - what do you bring with you when you walk the door?

What about the substance of me? Of us. What do we bring with us other than our presence.

Toni Morrison the great called the business of pleasing and answering and trying to get to a certain place - a distraction. It keeps us from doing our work. From honing who we are. So when you walk through the door or the table or the ceiling - all the architecture - are we fully formed and substantial and excellent - for ourselves.

With this idea in mind, I decided to make my own place. ARRAY, a black woman owned and operated arts haven. Where we believe in the disruptive power of the image.

We interrogate and investigate them. We foster and further them. We cultivate and craft them. We produce distribute market and exhibit them On a three building campus in L.A. I bought with my "Wrinkle in Time" money.

It’s a place where we were never absent. I’m talking about Institution building. And that can look however we want.

It can look like the woman who is my guest tonight, Bethann Hardison, who redefined fashion and family at a time when those words didn’t go together.

It can look like a South African girl who survived tragedy to become not only one of our most dynamic and fearless actors but a voice for change.

It can look like a a woman who oversees a staff of 5,000 and is one of this nation’s richest self made women who gives back through her talent and tenacity.

It can look like women who predate the crisis in the headlines - but who took a stand for victims, for refugees before most of the rest of us even knew to think about the border.

It can look like a woman who creates NEW worlds through pen and page and character to show us our CURRENT world as it is with more than 60 works to get name and counting.

It can look like a young women like Yara and Greta who reshape our ideas about intelligence and innovation, about age and power.

It can look like a record breaking, history making streak of athletic lightening that set the world on fire by showing what both her body and her heart can do.

Each of these women exude.

And their excellence. My excellence. Your excellence. The excellence of those who will come after us is within oneself, only experienced when the rhythm is in perfect working order. When we aren’t striving for seats. When we build new tables, new paradigms. New institutions. Or none at all.

I urge us all to assert a presence of excellence, to build our own monuments. In our own likeness. For ourselves. And to bring the truth with us. Every time.

Find out more about Glamour’s 2019 Women of the Year here.

Originally Appeared on Glamour