![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Having suffered as a child from the dearth of children’s books featuring black characters – the first she read was The Color Purple when she was 23 – she wanted to write “adventures and mysteries and thrillers” that had nothing to do with race, where the characters “just happened to be black”. She received over 80 rejection letters before her first book was picked up by a publisher, and she insisted from the start that her covers would reflect her protagonists – from Pig Heart Boy’s Cameron to Hacker’s Vicky – who were black. But things like even having black characters on covers when I first started was a bit of a political statement, because I’ve had more than one bookseller say to me ‘that book would sell better if you didn’t put black people on the cover’.”īut - as one senses from her refusal to let a pretty savage cold interfere with a packed day of interviews - Blackman is not an author to give in easily. “Through my whole writing career it seems people have always been criticising me for not tackling racism. “I hate being labelled,” she says today, ensconced in the chic café at the top of Waterstone’s Piccadilly, where she’s requested hot water to mix with the cold remedy she’s determinedly sipping on. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |