Even in Gilead, women get fed, and there are no homeless. The last thing I want to do is write about black people as tragic victims. The last thing I want to do is write about black women, or black people, as tragic victims. A few years later, Alexandra Pringle at Virago commissioned me to write my first novel and I dropped academe in favour of fiction. I didn’t want to write an unreadable book, but one that could stand on its own two feet without explanation.

Source: The Guardian October 05, 2019 06:56 UTC