Sacrificing Authenticity
The writer I used to be followed trends. She wrote based on the standard, sacrificing authenticity and, sometimes, diversity.
A writer friend once asked why I didn’t set my books in my city, Toronto. It was a good question to which I didn’t really have a good answer. Looking back, I think it may have had something to do with putting out what you take in.
For the most part, all of the books I read, from the time I could read to the time I started to write my own stories, were based in the United States. With the exception of Canadian content focused reading lists in high school and university.
When it came to the stories I loved—romance, fantasy, mystery, contemporary—worlds were consistently built in one country. And once I started writing, it didn’t matter what the genre was. Without realizing it, I had bought into the idea that beautiful stories could only happen there.
I’ve come to realize the reason for this is the same reason I rarely encountered main characters of colour in those same stories. Publishing seemed to be controlled and reserved for a few and those few could easily be identified in the books most widely marketed to the world.
Naturally, aspiring authors followed, whether knowingly or subconsciously, a trend which, consciously or unknowingly, became the standard.
It’s 2024, and so much has changed. It’s both refreshing and inspiring. I’m disappointed that my daughter had only a little more exposure to diverse characters and worlds than I did, but I love that my son gets to grow up in a world where he feels seen, even when he’s all by himself, curled up in his bed, escaping to a fictional world.
Since my last published novel in 2014, I've written a few stories here and there. Proudly, two of them are based in Toronto and one in Guyana, South America, the country my parents immigrated from. I haven’t decided what I’ll do with them. For now, they’re just for me.
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