We recently sat down with native Newarker and award-winning journalist and producer, Alexandra Hill, to talk about her inspirations, experiences, and life lessons learned.
TG: Who are some of your favorite women?
AH: Wow, OK… My favorite women… OK, let’s just get it out-of-the-way, Beyoncé! She’s an inspirational Black woman I grew up watching her career. She’s a mother. She’s a humanitarian. She’s probably the greatest performer of our generation since Michael Jackson. Then I would have to say Whitney Houston. Because I’m a Newark native Rah Digga. Shout out to Rah Digga. My girl is incredibly accomplished and everything that she’s done. She blazed a trail for women and hip-hop. We also have Queen Latifah, also a Newark native, who has blazed a trail for women Hip-hop and in an empowering way. In a way that said, “I’m going to be feminine and I’m going to be strong. And with that strength, I’m going to lead.” It’s not always easy to be feminine and strong, because often times people will judge you for being strong to mean that you’re being less feminine, as if feminine means weak. I believe the opposite.
TG: How have your ideas of womanhood changed and evolved from what they were when you were a child to now?
AH: Well, that’s what womanhood is. Womanhood is evolution. You never stop evolving as a woman. As women, as daughters, mothers, as sisters, as wise, as partners, as a businesswomen, everything about life is evolution as a woman. I can’t speak for everybody else, but life does come in chapters. As a woman, you’re always developing from puberty to, if it’s in the cards for you, motherhood to even “aging gracefully” as they say. It’s a process that can instill fear into a lot of women, which is why we have to embrace these opportunities to document things like this interview so that there is a history of legacy that we can look back on and see all of the different chapters in our lives and see how we’ve evolved through time.
TG: There are young girls right now, who are developing ideas and ambitions and inspiration, because there was an Alexandra Hill. That’s documented, including the achievements and awards and record for sustaining such a level of success. People fall off in every arena. Alexandra Hill is Alexandra Hill.
AH: Yes, but people don’t know the full story of what I’ve gone through. The level of success that I have now and the people that I know, it’s very rare to come across people that know me from 25 years ago and saw the struggle that I went through early on. That needs to be talked about as well because girls tend to grow up with different standards for beauty, for success, for what we should want out of life, and it can be so misguiding as a girl trying to figure out a way in this world. Those early 20s were hard. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I just had to keep my head down and do one goal at a time. That’s all I knew. I figured out when I finally got back in the college after dropping out for a while to figure out my life – I got back into it and I said to myself, “You know what, you can’t do anything else right now. You’ve got to put your head down and get that degree and then after that, I’ll figure out the next thing.” So it’s a process of just sometimes blocking all the noise and focusing on one goal at a time. There’s no one coming to rescue you like they tell you in the fairytales. That’s not going to happen. You’ve got to rescue yourself.
TG: What would you say to five year old Alex?
AH: I would say keep dancing. Don’t give up on joy. Dancing was my joy. My first heartbreak was when I felt like I wasn’t going to become a professional dancer.
TG: What would you say to 15-year-old Alex?
AH: I will say, “Get away from that man! Get away from that man, get out of your feelings, and get into your books!” Of all the things that I’ve gotten into, things that could’ve taken me down – I mean, I was a mother at 17, 18 – but thankfully I had enough of a support system that it didn’t take me out. And that was also because I was determined to not let that define me. So that’s the most important part of all of this: mistakes will come, just do not let it define you. Because some of those things that we think are mistakes at the time can actually lead to being the greatest motivation and the greatest accomplishment of your life. My daughter is 25 now. She is incredible! She’s incredible and we grew up together and I thought I was gonna mess her up because I couldn’t give her what I can give her now. It wasn’t perfect and there’s drama and you will trip up, but never let it bring you down because there’s so much more to life! And when I had my second daughter and I thought I was “doing it right” the second time around because I was older, but it still didn’t turn out “right”. I thought I was doing the “right thing” because I had the “right man”. You don’t really know a person, and when you’re taking off and they may not be, jealousy and all those types of things can come into play. Sometimes our men don’t support us because they’re jealous of our trajectory. When we start to leave them behind, they may want to reel you back on and that can be the death of a relationship, but it can also be the beginning of your life. If I would’ve just stayed for a man I would never have accomplished the things that I have.
TG: What do you want to say to other Black women?
AH: Like I tell my daughter, see each other, even if you don’t know each other, even if you just passing each other. Often times Black women have been taught to be rivals instead of cheerleaders for each other. So, even in the grocery store, if you see another Black woman and you catch each other’s eye, don’t look away. Acknowledge her. Smile. Say “Hey sis!“ or if you see someone who has nice hair or you like their outfit or their shoes and you’re just walking by them on the way home, don’t look down. Look up and acknowledge each other in a positive way. That could make all the difference, because you have a way more in common than you could ever think you would.
