Friday, January 15, 2016

"Daniel José Older creates female black heroes to make fantasy more real"

"Shadowshaper is set in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, where Older lives. The protagonist, a young Afro-Latina named Sierra, learns about her family’s history of supernatural powers. She can, as it turns out, interact with the spirit world. Her family has gone to great lengths to conceal that fact from her, but now it’s Sierra’s responsibility to protect them from what’s coming.

Older’s imagined Brooklyn is full of danger, less gentrified than the real-life version, and decidedly diverse. “We’re doing something very political by deciding whose life matters, where we’re going to focus things, and who we erase from the picture,” he says. This kind of diversity, he feels, is lacking in most other fantasy YA novels. “When we create worlds based on this world that don’t include diversity, we’re lying,” he says. “We’re not being honest as authors. Even if it’s infused with magical powers, or zombies, or whatever you’ll have, we should still be trying to tell the truth. Then, it becomes a question of what truth, how are we telling it, and whose truth do we take the time to repeat?”"
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/29/daniel-jose-older-black-heroes-ya-science-fiction?CMP=edit_2221

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