writing rage

21 May 2019 news 2 Comments

bvmThey say you don’t need to speak for others—when you’ve got the mic, just pass it along. Sometimes that’s easier said than done. I meant to give some shout-outs while I was being interviewed in Toronto but my hosts had very pointed questions and things didn’t turn out as I’d hoped. I did manage to reference Dr. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s new book The Dark Fantastic: Race & the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, but I didn’t get to talk about Whitney French who edited this excellent anthology or Nadia Hohn who is, I believe, the first Black Canadian author to be selected for the TD Children’s Book Week. It isn’t right that folks who are doing the work in the Great White North aren’t getting the attention they deserve. Neesha Meminger is another writer whose work everyone should know about; she’s got a memoir-novel in verse coming out next month, What Girls Know, and we decided to publish a discussion about writing, rage, and resistance. You can read the whole thing over at Medium but here’s a bit of “Truth-tellers & Troublemakers: a Conversation about Publishing in Canada:”

What Girls Know is an entirely different kind of book. It was fueled by a kind of rage that I really want to talk a bit more about with you, Zetta. Lately I’ve been reading a lot of essays and books about Women of Color and rage, and listening to podcasts specifically by Black women, around rage. I went through such a dark time (here, I mean dark as in the hermit walking through the night with a small flame to guide her steps) where my very survival, and the survival of my children was at stake, and it led me to this burning ember of rage. Not a destructive rage, but the kind of rage that burns everything down so something more sane, healthy, and true can be born. A rage that lights up the truth.

I started to see, with startling clarity, how desperate so many of us are to be seen. How desperate I was to be seen and validated and recognized. And how natural it is to want to be recognized for our value and worth. How, as BIPOC women, we are devalued from the moment of birth, how we fight to be seen and acknowledged at every turn from that first moment. How we are thrust and embedded into systems that were never designed for us, were never meant to exalt our gifts or contributions.

And yet, we go through our entire lives seeking some sort of validation or approval from these very systems.

thumbnailWe sure do! Last month I was happy to sign with a new agent, Johanna Castillo, and we’re working now on a publishing plan. This industry has a LOT of problems, and it’s not easy to be “in it but not of it.” I’m proud to be an indie author but I still make certain compromises to advance my projects, and it’s hard sometimes to see other authors getting the red carpet treatment for books that don’t seem better than mine. It’s easy to be seduced by power so Neesha’s comments were right on time. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read our conversation—and watch for the release of her new book!