YouSaid · the spoken record

Mara Brock Akil

lines on the record: 36
first: 2026-06-30
most recent: 2026-06-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And like Philip, like Marian, just at 40, just at whatever age, start to open up. Imagine if we can start to think about that at a younger age or prevent it, number one, but maybe if we start to think about the repair that has to happen earlier, how much more life and life force that's in us that we can actually get to the purpose of why we're here in the first place? And so the portrait work is to see fully because one scene I have a thesis that if we're seen and we come out of the womb, mommy, daddy see me and it goes to schools, it goes to coaches, it goes to theater and plays and media and you're never seen, then you never have to show up. So if I, and this compliment you give me, Oprah, I thank you because if people can be seen, then you're aware that you're seen, then why am I here is the next question. What am I here for? What am I supposed to?”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thank you. I think I like to think I do portrait work. And when you really do a portrait, you need to see the whole person. And I think I know I've been endeavoring to paint the fullest humanity of us. I feel like if America is our home, right, and we are children in this home, our image has been so distorted, if at all, on the wall. So imagine living in a home and all the pictures on the wall are mostly of white and male or certainly not you. And when your picture is up there, it's blurred, distorted. So for me, my drive is to try to paint the fullness of us because we deserve our full humanity. We deserve our light and our dark. And for us to figure out how to evolve on our own. And then the safety of others by first being in the safety of ourselves. And so then it brings, and a lot of these things are imparted on us and most of us spend a lot of our lives avoiding it.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That we hear, and multitude, why the man, how many stories we've heard about women saying that he took the best years of my life and I've waited five years and I've done this and I've done that. Well, I wanted to put my lens on his why and explore what a portrait of a black man would be in 1991 in New York for the successful black woman who's doing her thing and he's doing his thing and they look like the perfect couple and everybody projects onto the perfect couple. I wanted to pull that couple apart and I wanted us to see who they were and be reflection not only of them but still now.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, you can be with someone for five years, know they want to be married, know they want to spend the rest of their life with you, want to build a life with you. And you dangle little things in front of them because you want those things too, but you're not really, but he didn't want her. And I think that's a lot of investment, of time, especially in the 90s when every other article for women was your biological hawk. You better get that guy. At the same time, they're telling us to be independent. So she's on a quest to find her man so she can have that baby build that life. And he didn't want that from her. And I think through the lens of, but then I've got to shout out Madill School of Journalism. Why? So that Darren, for me, I got to explore why are some of these stories.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But they give us permission to share so we can let the weight off of us. And then I think we can begin to know who we are because some of what we've gone through will be who we are, really. You know what I'm saying? And what parts of that experience are we going to want to adopt? That says, okay? That's me. That's who I am. And then what are the parts that, you know what? I don't like that. And my body, now that I have my body back in sync with my heart, mind, and spirit, it tells me we don't like that. And now I have to find the voice, the silence that I kept me trapped, use that voice to start to speak up. And I say start to do it in simple places. I mean, I literally start small. They didn't get your order right on your coffee. Send it back”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To own the story. And I think that for me, my relationship with God, which we talked about, it gave me permission. If I believe that God has everything for me, then you want me to do something with this and maybe even just sharing your story with one other person, or I guess my case, alchemizing my own pain to share it with the world, it gives permission for other people to share theirs, like you sharing your story with me. It makes me feel not so nervous. I'm still telling my story. You're braver than me. You're telling your full story as who you are. I get to take my pain and alchemize it through a character.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then it's like, okay, well, maybe your memory is wrong, which kind of comes up in the book. First of all, I just want to say thank you for sharing and just. I'm sorry. I think sharing our story allows us to say, I'm sorry that you don't deserve that, but I'm also proud of you for getting yourself through that. And I think I would say that you probably facing your storm is the way through. And that's the takeaway that I feel. The release is. Is through it. It's not avoiding it.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I feel like that has been, that is now, that is happening. And so that allows for Dion or me to have a conversation with you right now. Because to your point, how do we trust? And that would be the question then. How do we do that? How do we see that? If we're looking for something outside of ourselves all the time.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's interesting trust. I don't think we're really going to get to that level of idyllic trust in others if we're not that to ourselves. And as much as she did all the right things, I don't believe Dion never took stock of what happened. She never faced the storm of her life.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I've enjoyed just thank you for that, the generosity of the reflection of it. What's interesting to me about My children play video games. There's the main character. We always talk about main character energy But there are all these non player characters, right? I'm always interested in those people and you think that they're just moving along. I'm just successful. Nothing's wrong with me. I'm above shame. Let's pluck them out and let's put them, let's look at them, let's open them up, let's reveal them, let's understand them, let's understand their why. And so that was a journey not only for me, but it was fun to then incorporate what is happening around us today. And it's interesting about HIV.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Much earlier. And for longer periods of time. But the one other thing I'd like to say about compartmentalization is memory. It's funny in my work now. We're working, I don't even like to call it flashbacks. I'm trying to articulate memory. And it can, memory can also be very dangerous. But one of the things that is trying to get your memory back. So in the book, you'll see the Dion is trying to get her memory back because a lot of times when you compartmentalize, you got to keep things sorted.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How could Yes, you know, even when my own children became about age, you know, I took the time to Those moments out Because I thought the same thing. How could anybody touch a child at that age? And then, and of course, we know it happens.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just how I keep things separate, sometimes even friends, sometimes even like how much I try to control every environment so I can survive it.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, you learn. Yes, you learn how to be the different parts of yourself fragmented, puzzle yourself out to hide this thing. To hide this You know, I was told that if I told anyone, I gave this to Dion. If I told anyone that I would be taken away from my mother and, you know, it was just like, you know, you're a child. You don't know. You don't know what's true or not. And so But the compartmentalization of self is in one way the victory of me, because just like I talked about the grades, I understood how to keep my focus around my escape plan, if that makes sense. You can hold on to the straight A student. Meanwhile Prepare yourself sometimes for the night. Mentally, physically. And it's funny about when I say the food on my plate, I started to notice my behavior. The other thing that's really interesting about compartmentalization”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I didn't even know why I was doing that. These examinations of this thing, I'm like, oh my God, Mar, you even let your food touch?”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't know I was doing that all those years when you're performing, and I don't even know if I was performing how disconnected I have been from my own body. I was so compartmentalized. I just recently in my adult life let my food touch. I didn't realize how psychologically separate items. You mean on your plate? Yeah, on my plate.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you do. You start from, it's funny, yes, and that's what she does. She starts from the last one she had is the guy, the one night stands she just had. She knows one night stand. And then her boyfriend.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I came further and further. No one could kind of see, and then I put the good girl image up. I hid around the corners. People can project onto you and so you can allow that story to be true if they think good of you. And whether you, however you feel about yourself in those quiet moments, you can then adopt that ideas of yourself to get you through. So I think my relationship with God, my ability to understand how to alchemize that pain and energy and focus it in my grades and keep graduation and getting to the best school as my escape plan.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I know she did it out of love. She was clueless too, but at that time I knew that I had to escape. And the best way I knew how to escape is through what my family believes in is education. So I became this amazing student. So I also became that much more undetected.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would share this time in my life from nine to twelve that I was molested. And what was interesting to me at that time, and this is where the book comes into play, is how well. I managed. And I managed by one of the greatest gifts I've ever had was that's where my relationship with God truly began. That my relationship is rooted in that. And sometimes I even think about if that had never happened, where would my relationship with God be? And such, well, it happened to me. And God loves me. So I'm supposed to do something with it. And now all these years later, I believe this is my something to do with it. The second thing that I realized is how much you can repurpose energy. I didn't have that language at that time. But I channeled at that point. My escape of Mother's choices, like I was in the care of this person because of her”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just hiding so much of ourselves, and actually, I think it's the thing that frees us the most. And so the writing the book was an opportunity for me to free myself.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, absolutely. I think we're responsible for our own healing. And I have used the power of the pen to not only tell stories and entertain, but also to heal myself. I've put myself in a lot of my characters. A part of my ethos is I tell the truth through fiction. So there's going to be some level of real truth that I am really drawing from. And I'm grateful that I have the ability to learn how to craft it. in a way that really becomes this micro story of mine becomes a macro of what's impacting a lot of us and i can find it through the workshopping of the story about who this book is for why this book now and there's just a lot of shame i think because even with the onset of the camera and the social media we're hiding parts of ourselves”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This Mars fascination with who these people are, and I decided to make him her witness. This young man who has been dropping the paper at her door every night was there at the time. And so he is the one that helps her usher through this two weeks. She turns around and faces”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're But that moment it was her ex, Darren. Is in the book, and we discover why and how he got to that place. There's her new lover. He's in the book, and she has to figure out how to tell him. And then there's a witness One fun fact is I don't know we get to experience this anymore that your paper gets your paper used to be dropped off in front of your house every day at 3 a.m. 4 a.m. And somebody had to do that.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think 91 times because it was a time. And I was floored. I mean, literally. It's funny, I was at Northwestern at the time, and when I got back to school, I took an HIV test. And one of the homeworks you have is that you have to write down all of your sexual relations because in case you have it, you have to go contact them. That's how we were stopping the disease at that time. Kind of like COVID, kind of reminds you of that. And so I thought I'd give that to Dion and where she has to go back her homework and she has to write down all the names of her lovers. And so, and at the top of the list is her stepfather.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I took the test back in the day. I was a journalist. I was covering a story on World AIDS Day for the Grand Rapids Press. Know this is a time when AIDS was a gay man's disease. I'm as a reporter and I remember this woman walking past me in the hall and I thought, gosh, she's gorgeous. I shocked her. I always shopped like I shopped you. I was like, oh, that's cute. That's cute. Let me get to the press conference on time because I'm the reporter. I'm in the back of the room and she is the woman who is telling us that she's HIV positive. My jaw hit the floor, hit the floor. This is 1990 or 1991, either 90 or 91.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. There's a knock at the door And it's her ex of five years. And he tells her, you know, I have HIV and you need to go get tested. And so the book takes place within the two weeks of that test. And she's on that train. And one of the homework.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's perfect. Okay, I could do that. Yeah. Guide me through this overall. She's on the train. She's on the train. She's got her look together and she's headed outside the city of New York because she's ashamed that she has to take an HIV test. Because two nights prior, after having finally gotten over her man of five years and feeling like he's not coming back, it's the first night, six months after they broke up, that she's bringing home a man. And on the same night that she is having sexual relations with him for the first time after being in the...”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I don't want to be cliche and say everyone, but anybody who wants to unload their shame. Anybody who wants to talk about it, think about it, let go of it, that's who the book is for. What I'm excited though is as universal as that story is, the specificity of letting Dion, a young black woman in the 90s who didn't think she had a problem in the world take us on that journey to be at the tip of the arrow to talk about shame and her to be very brave and vulnerable to share her story. Hopefully, we'll give permission to anyone who cares any level of shame.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, you know, I want to honor Chelsea Johns who called me. What's interesting is during COVID, when everybody got a chance to slow down and think She reached out to me and said, I believe your voice, she's my editor. I believe your voice would translate to the page beautifully. And it's funny enough, I had a story that I wanted to tell for a long time, and I had it in script notes for a while. I had, you know, when I build anything, I have a lot of research, a lot of notes, a lot that you never will see that informs what makes the page. And so I was taking notes on this idea and I knew it got shelved because Who's going to buy this in this? I knew this industry was not going to buy this story even as prolific as I am. This was going to be a tough sell to sort of like pitch this story as a film”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, but I don't believe a lot of us do sometimes. And so how the book gave me just a great Just great bandwidth to explore interiority, which in my work in general, that's what I want, that's the legacy I want to leave is that I've painted portraits of full humanity and having a new canvas, a book was just, it was extraordinary.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's funny, I like to say, as Maya would say, I'm an authores now. But it's, you know, my process is the same in terms of what I latch on to. And sometimes it comes through visions. It comes through visions. I'll see scenes. I'll see. And those are puzzle pieces. And I just put a puzzle piece here and a puzzle piece here. What was so refreshing about? Book was How much I got to explore the interiority. One of the challenges that I have in screenwriting is how do I not say it, not say exactly what the character or the plot or the theme is in dialogue, how? Because a lot of, in my experience, certainly for myself, And my experiencing and witnessing of others, we don't really say what we really mean. We are just really, I think that's what was fun about writing Being Mary Jane because she said what she meant.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And my little girl just was happy. She was, I was so happy. I was walking down the street smiling in New York and then I think the next day got the call that the official call.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was about day three or day four, and we were number one. And you know, when you think about it, you're like, number one, you're like, oh wait a minute, we're number one in the world. And there's all these people on the street, you know, New York is. And I was thinking, they don't know it's me. They don't know that me right now for her.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know, 25 years and being on Netflix for five years has just garnered a whole new audience. That's right. 16 year olds love me, Oprah My girlfriends is like you know the forever of their time, I guess.”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“She's on the train headed outside the city of New York because she's ashamed that she has to take an HIV test. Because two nights prior, her ex of five years tells her I have HIV and you need to go get tested. She has to write down all the names of her lovers. And at the top of the list is her stepfather”
2026-06-30 · The Oprah Podcast · Mara Brock Akil’s New Novel About Betrayal, Shame & Redemption with Oprah · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT