I believed readers only wanted trauma stories from writers of colour. Then I became an author | Zoya Patel

For so long, it seemed that readers were only interested in the experiences of people like me if we were traumatised, not triumphant – and I internalised this as an indisputable factGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailI can’t pinpoint exactly when I started imagining myself in the stories I read but I know it was at a young age. Some of the first books I really connected with were Sweet Valley Twins, a US series about blond, blue-eyed twin sisters who lived a very middle-class white life I could barely picture. I knew on some level that I wouldn’t exist in their community, where there was no suggestion of cultural diversity. But I wanted to, so in my daydreams about the twins and their world I added an Indian girl to their friendship group.Even as a child I knew that the onus was on me to stretch my imagination to include myself; it was not on the writers to incorporate diversity in their stories in the first place.Sign up for our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morningZoya Patel’s novel Once a Stranger is published by Hachette Australia ($32.99) Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2023-03-18 19:00:19 UTC ]
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