During the Emmys on Sunday night [1], Tyler Perry [2] received the coveted Governors Award, which recognized his contributions to shaping television and his commitment to humanitarian efforts [3]. In his acceptance speech, Perry recounted the time his grandmother had gifted him a quilt, using it as a metaphor for his own history. "I dismissed her work and her story because it didn't look like what I thought it should," he recalled. His dismissal of his grandmother's quilt mirrors Hollywood's initial views of Perry, as referenced by Chris Rock [4]'s joke in his introduction, "And, of course, Hollywood welcomed an independent Black man with open arms . . . Hollywood saw him as a fad."

Perry continued, "Now whether we know it or not, we are all sewing our own quilts, with our thoughts, with our behaviors, our experiences, and our memories." He then took a moment to talk about a memory within his own quilt, ending with his mother saying he should never wait by a door waiting for white folks to do nothing for him. "She couldn't imagine a world where her son was not waiting by the door for someone. In my mother's quilt she couldn't imagine owning land that was once a Confederate army base . . . and now, on that very land, Black people, white people, gay, straight, lesbian, transgender, ex-cons, Latin, Asian, all of us come together, working . . . Diversity at its best," Perry added. You can watch his full speech above, complete with an introduction from Chris Rock and Oprah Winfrey [5].