Mara Brock Akil Changed TV. But Her Most Urgent Story Demanded a New Medium

While Brock Akil’s experiences as a survivor of child molestation are not precisely mirrored in Dionne’s, her years of introspection have produced relationships and insights that feel authentic, including implicating oneself: “I have examined how I could get into a situation like that,” she says. Then she learned how infuriatingly common it is for people, especially but not exclusively women, to carry this invisible weight. She looks around the café where we’re sitting and estimates that, statistically, three or four of the put-together patrons sipping coffee share this dark element of her past. “We look like professionals, writers, actors, journalists—we look like all these things that we want to be. We don’t look like the things that have been done to us and that we have survived,” she says.“I’m fascinated by how long we carry them, how we move through them, through the other desires and goals of our life.”