The year was 2018. Trump was in the White House. I'd come to LA to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. I am not American — a fact I felt acutely, given the period's political context. I felt alienated, and ashamed to express it, because my accent marked me as a member of a country likely to be classified as a “shithole.” Despite this, I earned an art residency at a sleek, multi-story downtown building. As I examined the elegant space, I looked across the hallway, immediately stunned by the costumes I saw in the window. Stammering over my words, I asked for an internship. And that was how this island girl met Ruth.
Ruth E. Carter needs no introduction, but I'll introduce her anyway. She made history in March as the first Black woman to ever win two Oscars. It is a shocking fact. But what's even more confounding — especially if you’ve ever worked in the arts or entertainment in Los Angeles — is how grounded she is. She was always very busy, very calm, and very easy to talk to, hidden sometimes behind bolts of fabric or stacks of books, or on set. This was all before she won her first Oscar for Black Panther in 2019, nearly three decades after her first nomination for Malcolm X in 1992, but the fact that she hadn’t hardly mattered. The racks of clothes — from Roots, from Do The Right Thing, from Selma, from Amistad — were so painstakingly detailed, so damn beautiful, marked still, perhaps, by the sweat of whoever they last helped come alive. They vibrated with their own worth.
I interviewed Ruth not soon after her first book, The Art of Ruth E. Carter, was published. What struck me the most was that this extraordinary woman was once just a striving Black girl like so many of us, making her own odds. So I recently gave Carter a call/spoke to Carter over Zoom to talk about how she got here, the legacy she wants to leave behind, and more.
This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Amanda Choo Quan: Your book opens up with this visual of you at 26 driving to Los Angeles, having taught yourself how to make your own costumes. How the hell did that feel?
Ruth Carter: In my senior year of college, I was concerned that, because I was self-taught, I didn't have enough training. So my first step was to find the best internships. I packed up my Volkswagen Rabbit and I drove to New Mexico. And I was excited, because I was told that the opera training there was the best in the country. And then my relatives invited me to come to California and live with them to pursue film. I felt like driving to Los Angeles was like me entering grad school.
I was landing in a new place I'd never been. But also, I was going someplace where I would be protected.
ACQ: What struck me reading your book was that there were so many versions of the Black family, like whether it was working with Spike [Lee], or working with your brother.
RC: My brother — two of my brothers — were artists. One actually pursued art professionally. I lived with him to get through illustrations for Spike Lee's School Daze. My brother would be in his studio sitting in a big chair in front of the TV, and I'd have to go up to his kitchen and make him a big old vodka orange juice. And then I'd sit back at his drafting table and just sketch for hours and days.
Working with Spike Lee and [his production company] 40 Acres and a Mule became my next family. Academia has its mentors, but they're there to teach; you're there to learn. In the professional world, you know that your purpose is to accomplish the goal and deal with it fast.
ACQ: Do you ever feel as though it's really hard for Black women to let themselves go creatively and just embrace the fact that we can be artists too?
RC: I didn't grow up wanting to roll my hair every night and paint my nails. My mother kept encouraging me to, but I just hated it. It was really a family that lived across the street that was my second home. [They were] really my first glimpse at Afrofuture, because they talked about learning about your roots and understanding what makes us beautiful. So when I went to Hampton [University, the HBCU in Virginia], I was trying to be more of myself, but I don't think that everyone understood me. And I was isolated quite a bit [in] the costume shop. And maybe that's the thing that made me overfocused.
ACQ: You were the weird girl in college!
RC: I was the weird girl, yes! It didn't even hurt me. And I think that's because [that family] empowered me with the idea that we can be who we are. And we don't have to apologize for it.
ACQ: I want to ask a little bit more about that. Because I feel that confidence running through the book. You did a lot of talking to people to get to where you wanted to be. There's a lot of, like, you spoke to this theater director, and that's how you got the job. It made me laugh because it reminded me of when I walked into your office for my internship. How did you learn how to ask for what you want?
RC: I had some of the most incredible mentors, starting with my brother.
The strongest was this woman, Linda Bolton Smith. She was a writer and also a professor at Hampton. She let me live with her for my last year, and I saw someone who I wanted to be like. And I think because I had that vision, when I saw an opportunity, I just asked.
ACQ: It seems as though you felt empowered because you had a support system of Black folk around you who made you feel special.
RC: And a vision of what it looked like. [Linda] woke up every morning at four or five, and she would write for two hours before her classes. She herself had an advisor, and they would meet and have coffee. And then in the afternoon, she and I had some bonding moments. She was the first person to tell me that I was an artist.
ACQ: I want to hear a little bit more about how that carried you through. In the book, when you were just starting out, you said you had a mattress on the ground, you had a studio apartment. I'm sorry to say that my mattress is still on the ground, because I don't know how to put together a bed and I'm not going to pretend that I do. And LA is such a strange place. You can see the Hollywood sign while being broke as hell. You can be on a movie set while sleeping on a mattress on the ground.
RC: I didn't mind it. I think I felt was living the life of a person who was pursuing their dream. That was the romance — that I could make something out of nothing.
ACQ: What was LA like back then in the 80’s?
RC: The emergence of hip hop.
We were at the very beginning.
We were doing our thing. So you had like, Heavy D & the Boyz. And Big Daddy Kane. So you were listening to the pioneers of hip hop. And I think for us, we [represented] an artistic introduction to filmmakers, like Spike Lee and Robert Townsend and Keenan Ivory Wayans, [who wanted] to see representation that was not happening at the time. You had people playing gang members who were just actors. And it seemed so fake to us.
ACQ: Were you the only Black girl in costumes back then?
RC: There was this guy named Palmer Brown. He was in television, and he made a mark for himself. Francine Tanchuck, who had been working on the support side as a supervisor. And I knew of people who were support staff, but I did not know of anyone in film that I could say hi [to]. So I looked to anyone. And you know, I would write them letters. Nobody ever brought me on. But at the same time, I got busy with Spike and these guys. I was so busy that if someone else had offered me an internship on their film, I couldn't take it.
ACQ: It's so interesting to me that this decision that you made to do your own thing years later becomes cornerstones of Black culture, films, aesthetics. How does that feel?
RC:: Well, every film opportunity was an opportunity for me to learn the medium. So now, years later, I can say that I was not only learning the medium, I was actually learning how to have a voice. I came out of theater, and I was like, how do I make my movies theatrical and dramatic? How do I bring [the] strong point of view that I've seen in theater productions? And so now looking back…I can see the aesthetic. I can see the art.
ACQ: I remember working with your archives and seeing the level of care and detail, like mud on the fabric from Roots. And it shocked me that you had not won an Oscar yet. It makes me think of what happens when Black folk are awarded later in life. It makes me think about the frustration that we might feel at the beginning, because white people might receive awards sooner than we do. Did you feel frustrated?
RC: No, because I didn't look to them for validation. I knew that there were awards that were handed out to the same people over and over again in costume design. So people like Spike Lee said to me, don't worry about winning awards. Just do a good job. When we think that this is going to be it, and then it doesn't get you the award, is everything that you've accomplished negated? And all of these awards are biased and racist. They're based on a lot of subjectivity. And so how do you measure your own worth? Based on something that doesn't really know you?
ACQ: When I first came to the U.S. as someone from Trinidad, seeing the way that structural racism worked in America, I could not understand how it was possible to navigate life while also having your self worth remain intact. How did you manage that?
RC: In order to rise above that, you have to see yourself in a bigger light — that is someone who is worthy of opportunity, worthy of knowledge, worthy of beauty on your own standard. And that stayed with me.
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