Carrie Mae Weems always knew she was going to be an artist, but she didn't know she wanted to be a photographer until she got her first camera in her late teens. It was a gift from a boyfriend who turned out to be "manipulative," but it launched her into a career that's made her a MacArthur Fellow and the first black woman to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum.
As she tells this week's guest host, author Tayari Jones, her professional drive has always been the barometer against which she's measured her personal relationships. "If I'm entering a relationship [and] struggling around notions of my ability to work, then it's not a relationship that I can stay in," she says. "I already see the handwriting is on the wall." Together, they talk about balancing that ambition with the relationships in their lives that matter. Plus, Carrie explains why she drank someone else's champagne on her wedding day.
This episode is part of Death, Sex & Money's 2019 Maternity Leave Lineup. Tayari Jones first joined us on the show in 2018 to talk about the freedoms of singlehood, and the call from Oprah that changed everything for her.
