Representation in Literature Quotes

The gender inequality in book reviewing isn't getting better. Male authors get the majority of review coverage, and male reviewers do most of the reviewing. It's kind of devastating.

Bent Literary Agency had a Q&A on Twitter, and I took a chance and asked if the Black Lives Matter movement was an appropriate topic for a YA novel. Brooks Sherman, who is now my agent, responded that he didn't think any topics were inappropriate for YA. I remember being so terrified even just sending the tweet.

When I was in the YA age range myself, I didn't feel like there were a lot of books for me.

Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books.

My friend Ian Hagemann, a regular at Wiscon, once said on a panel that when he reads science fiction futures that are full of white people and no one else, he wonders when the race war happened that wiped out the majority of the human race, and why the writer hasn’t mentioned such an important plot point.

I look at western literature and especially North American literature, and I feel like it gets bogged down so much with all of that, with domestic stories and relationships and a woman dealing with the loss of her husband.

I know that when I was a kid, and I was reading whatever I could get my hands on, I didn't associate myself with the girl characters.

My goal for the #1000BlackGirlBooks campaign is to create systemic change across all school systems. I want there to be diverse books that reflect the lives of every person, regardless of whether or not they are in the majority.

Initially, I wanted to write middle grade. YA scared me: there's a lot of responsibility in being a YA author. It's so important to give that age range the right books that reflect their world and show them themselves.

Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye … I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.

I'm hot on the Jewish book club circuit. How many black authors do you know who can say that?

I see so many talented writers of color struggling to get their work out to an audience. I know that's the case for all writers - everyone's struggling for attention - but I do think that for writers of color it's harder, and for women it's harder, and for regional writers it's harder, too.

Kids tell me all the time, "I don't know how you do it, but that's us in the book." That's the kind of response you want, and I can't sacrifice it for the sake of somebody worried about censorship. You have to find a way to be truthful and honest.

Let's stop reflexively comparing Chinese writers to Chinese writers, Indian writers to Indian writers, black writers to black writers. Let's focus on the writing itself: the characters, the language, the narrative style.

I remember going into a bookshop, and the only book I saw with a black child on the cover was 'A Thief in the Village' by James Berry, and I thought, 'Is this still the state of publishing?' Then I thought, 'Either I can whine about it or try to do something about it.'

I think the diversity of authors and readers is expanding, which is wonderful, because it means the type of story being told is also expanding.

Many writers write across difference of one kind or another. Sometimes the difference is large and recognizable: gender, or race, or religion, or sexuality. And sometimes the differences are smaller. ... Where authors get into trouble is in trying to make those different characters stand in for whole groups of people, or for creating characters only to fetishize or explore their supposed otherness. Your character can be wildly different from you, as long as he's written with respect and, moreover, specificity.

The bright future is that readers are accepting more varied forms of stories.

I try really hard to ask people to take a look at their bookshelves. Are there female writers on it? Gay writers? Writers of color? There should be.

Having spent half my time at university studying English literature, I know from experience that reading lists often contain more white men than Jacob Rees-Mogg's last birthday party.