Look and Listen

Biography

TaKeshia Brooks graduated from Xavier University of Louisiana in 2001 with a bachelor of art degree in communication and minor in English. There she spent four years working for the school paper The Xavier Herald. She held the post of entertainment editor for three years as well as editor-in-chief for one of those years. She also worked two years in the school’s writing lab as a tutor. Upon graduating from Xavier, she began her post-graduate career at the University of Michigan where she spent six years pursuing a Ph.D. in communication studies. However, she decided not to finish the endeavor, instead opting to remain an independent scholar in order to keep her unique vision and ideas intact. With this in mind, she self-published her would-be dissertation, Dream Factory Deferred: Black Womanhood, History and Music Video in August 2007. Although she still plans to continue working on formal research projects, she also includes fiction and creative writing among her contributions to intellectualism. Realizing the limitations of scholarly work, she feels it is crucial to use entertainment to broaden potential audiences. Brooks has been writing since childhood but began seriously exploring creative writing during her tenure in graduate school. Familiar with all styles of writing though not formally trained, she experimented with screenplays and short stories. One constant from which she cannot stray is implementing influences from popular culture into her work, particularly music and film. She believes the only true American culture is popular culture, so her running theme is exploration of how people, particularly African-American women, use and respond to various types of pop culture.

Inspiration

Of course most of my inspiration comes from my family and my desire to honor them. They inspire everything I do (right) and everything I strive to achieve. My writing is mostly inspired by the black women who came before me. Although I know I may not have the same abilities or powers as them, I truly adore writers such as Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Octavia Butler and Bebe Moore Campbell. Still, another primary source of inspiration for me is popular culture itself. As you may see from my biography, I take it into consideration in everything I do.