LOS ANGELES — Janelle Monáe has done it all. She's an accomplished musician, activist, actor, fashion icon — and, with the release of "The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer" earlier this month, a published author.
"I've been saying this on the road, but I feel like I'm on my second Earth life," she said Saturday afternoon at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. She was joined by Times columnist Erika D. Smith inside a packed Bovard Auditorium at USC.
Monáe opened up about her struggles with feeling abandoned and rejected, which stemmed from her father's crack addiction and absence from her life.
