April 2011
30 posts
Holly Black, on diversity in your writing. →
diversityinya.com
ML: What advice would you give to a writer who wants to incorporate diversity in their novel, but isn’t a person of color or LGBT themselves, and is afraid of messing up?
HB: As someone who is not a person of color and who worries about messing up myself, I am probably the last person who should be giving anyone advice. But I think that we as writers have an obligation to tell the truth about the world — and diverse world is a true world. I also think that we have to be conscious of which stories are ours to tell, which stories we have points of identification with and which stories we need to do more work if we want tell responsibly. … We have to be thoughtful, but we have to try.
I’ve been kicking around another comic project, but I’ve been harboring a feeling of terror about it for exactly this reason. This awesome quote has given me the inspiration to keep at it. Thanks, Holly Black!
