Over four decades since For Colored Girls..., we see Ntozake's immense influence in the ownership of our stories, from the heroines of Shonda Rhimes to Issa Rae's Insecure, to the revelations of the #MeToo movement. Many of us have accepted her blessing the challenge she presented for us to show ourselves as the flawed, complicated, yet complete creatures we are. Intuitively, she knew that the telling of those stories - our beautiful, diasporic, sometimes broken, often dark stories - held the key to freeing ourselves from any attendant shame.