Morris, who has had a passion for writing and experience in the legal field, is well poised to write her first thriller novel, All Her Little Secrets. In a recent interview with rolling out’s Meet the Author Series, Morris talks about racism and sexism in corporate America today.
You address topics that many Black women face in corporate America such as racism, microaggressions, and sexism. Was that intentional?
I was intentional about that. I set out to write a book about being a Black female in this country and whether you are working in the echelons of the executive suites in corporate America, or you’re just trying to go out and shop in a boutique with your girlfriend Sunday after brunch. It’s tough. I set out to write this woman’s story. Of course, it’s fictional and it goes to some very dark places, but I think that there is something in the story that resonates with a lot of women and I found that it’s resonated with women across races [and] across age groups.
Does this book depict you in any way?
There are some pieces of me in here. Some of the experiences certainly come out of my own experiences, some of the things that have happened in corporate America, the whole racial profiling bit.
The theme of family and “workplace” family are mentioned throughout the book. Was there an underlying message you were trying to convey?
Yes. Interestingly enough, the idea for the book came out of an experience where I worked for an organization and executive management called “everybody family.” You know employees were family. I worked in the legal department and someone in my department died. now there was nothing sinister about it. The person just died. I was just mortified by how quickly everyone went back to normal after this so-called family member died. I was like, we should be extending ourselves to the family to his biological families. Shouldn’t we be talking about this? But it was as if this person never existed. So I wanted to play with this whole idea of: who is family and why do we call them family?
