The first part of Al Davison and Yen Quach’s Future Echoes — the debut release from BMP’s Liminal Comics imprint — releases today in a digital edition.
We are excited to present this interview by Liminal Comics editor Alisa Kwitney with Future Echoes creators and collaborators Al Davison and Yen Quach, who talk about working together on Future Echoes, the origin of the story’s concept, and their perspectives on contemporary comics and issues of disability and representation.
Alisa Kwitney (AK): Al, when did you first get the idea for this project?
Al Davison (AD): Sept 3rd, 1988. I recently found my original notes and sketches. I was suffering a temporary bout of blindness and increased paralysis, the onset symptoms of M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis). I woke up blind and unable to walk in my third-floor flat. I started to hallucinate as a result of fever and later malnutrition. So the idea came from that situation: What if a disabled man was trapped in a building and couldn’t trust his senses? The notes and sketches were done whilst still blind.
AK: Yen, how did you get involved?
Yen Quach (YQ): I had been working with Al on the pre-press work for Spiral Cage and just around the studio space quite a lot once I graduated from university, so I guess you can say pretty organically, as Al asked if I’d be interested in working with him and Alisa on the Future Echoes project. We had previously collaborated on a mini-Sandman series of illustrations, trading off ‘stages’ of drawing on the same page, so working on Future Echoes feels like a nice step beyond that. It’s fun, and such an honor to be asked aboard this project.
AK: Al, what are the benefits of working with a young newcomer to the comics industry?
AD: I find it hard to think of Yen as a newcomer! Yes, she’s only been working a couple of years, but apart from her talent, which is self-evident, she is extremely well organised, knowledgeable, and hard-working. It’s like working with an old, long-established fellow professional, just without the ‘old’ bit. Oh, and yes, ridiculous amounts of energy. People often wrongly assume Yen is my apprentice. She assists me, yes, but we are an equal partnership and learn from each other. We both enjoy trying out new drawing techniques, new art materials, and like to challenge ourselves and each other.
AK: Yen, what are the benefits of working with an experienced artist and writer?
YQ: I’m picking up a lot of invaluable experience through being able to see how Al works his craft. He doesn’t work from a written script, so I can’t exactly pop the top of his head off and pick his brain (haha!), but I do end up asking questions about why Al has chosen to have [x] words or [y] shot in the panel, and we have a nice conversation about the process. It’s back-and-forth and we’re on equal ground as creators, so it’s pretty relaxed. Well, for me at least! I realise I’m depending on a lot of Al’s experience, which is a privilege.
AK: Al, what do you think about the role of disabled people in comics, books, film, and TV? How has it gotten better over the past three decades? How has it remained the same?
AD: I think there has been definite progress, but sometimes it seems there is one step forward and three steps back. There are still very few prominent disabled characters in comics, or in other media, and most of them have get-out clauses: Charles Xavier can walk when it fits the plot; Oracle, the most important disabled character in mainstream comics, has been cured. Daredevil can see better than a sighted person… Appropriate casting is the biggest issue. American TV was way ahead of Britain in that regard, then they jumped back ten years and cast an able-bodied actor as a wheelchair user in Glee, which seemed to legitimise ‘cripping-up’ again as a valid option. The same is happening in terms of race and LGBT-themed work, with whitewashing on the increase once again in films like Ghost in the Shell (2017) and Exodus and the casting of a cisgender man as a transgender woman in The Danish Girl. On the plus side we have creators like Yen, Gail Simone, and Marjorie Liu, amongst others, creating wonderfully challenging and inclusive work. So I’m an optimist while aware there is still an awful lot of work to do.
AK: Yen, how has your role on the project changed over time?
YQ: The division of work, as much as you can say for a collaboration that mixes our work in traditional and digital space, was pretty clear from the outset. I like to be organised so that what needs to be done is clear, and that has helped to keep things from being confusing.
In addition to being the principal artist for Amelia’s segments, I’m also lettering the comic, which has been a nice skill to develop and helping to wrangle all the files. Being able to collaborate remotely thanks to the Internet has been a great resource, too, and has been a good way to make sure that the project can run smoothly. But to get back to the question: I think my role on the project has stayed more or less the same!
AK: Al, you were very outspoken on social media about the problems with the movie (from the novel) Me Before You. Do you feel that this project is a creative response to some of the issues you raised?
AD: Yes, even though it was originally conceived much earlier. There are still very negative views on disability: for example, the Me Before You film, and the book it is based on, epitomise what has become known as the ‘better dead than disabled’ mentality in Hollywood and other media. I wanted to challenge that. I also wanted Yen on board, partly because there is an intersection between my experience as a disabled man and Yen’s experience as a woman and as a person of color, I knew we’d be on the same page. We’ve had many discussions about our various experiences dealing with prejudice and discrimination.
Having also been lucky enough to attend numerous conventions and other events with Yen, travelling together, it has been interesting and upsetting for me to see her facing different but equally difficult challenges than I do as a wheelchair user, and both of us having to deal with ignorant comments and assumptions on a regular basis.
All this has certainly informed the work.
AK: Yen, you have been illustrating the Victorian female protagonist’s story. Even though society has changed a great deal since the 1800s, are there ways you identify with Amelia’s struggle as a woman and an artist?
YQ: It’s absolutely true even now that being female-presenting is more difficult in society. as it is still very patriarchal. Looking at it intersectionally, I’m also a person of color (POC), and that has an additional layer of challenges, though I do have the privilege of being cisgendered and able-bodied. I’m still only a fledgling, but I’m optimistic since social media and the Internet have made it that much easier to get myself out there and connect with others. The future is promising as attitudes shift to become more open and accepting. ♥
AK: Al, a similar question for you: how much do you see of yourself in Harlan?
AD: Well, I see aspects of myself in both Harlan and Amelia. My background is closer to Amelia’s in terms of circumstances, being from a lower-working-class family, as someone who didn’t own a pair of shoes till I was eleven. Though she’s definitely more physically confident than I was at her age. My experiences of being viewed as a desexualised non-physical being who was only considered valid on any level because I had a ‘talent’ is certainly in line with Harlan. Having a ‘talent,’ yet on the one hand being continually told I wasn’t good enough to compete with my able -bodied peers, while on the other hand still being expected to perform like a circus animal to justify my existence, probably resonates with both characters. I mean, I’ve had an art director tell me that he didn’t hire the disabled because they smelled bad. I’ve had one comics editor say he wouldn’t consider any projects featuring disabled characters because he didn’t want to be remembered as the editor who labelled me a ‘disabled creator,’ and another who said he wouldn’t consider me for any superhero books because obviously as a wheelchair user I couldn’t possibly understand how to draw action. When I suggested that would mean no one could draw Superman since no one could fly, he said I shouldn’t be so bitter, and might be better off going into portraiture! So the cliche of working twice as hard, often to get half as far as an able-bodied person, is true to my experience. But the Internet and the increasing affordability of self-publishing is levelling the playing field to a degree. Still a ways to go, though.
Al Davison is a comic creator who has worked extensively for DC/Vertigo on such titles as Vermillion, House of Mystery, The Dreaming, and The Unwritten. He has also drawn Doctor Who comics for IDW, but is probably best known for his graphic memoir The Sprial Cage, which explores his experiences growing up with Spina-Bifida, a condition he was born with and was not expected to survive. He is currently working on the sequel, Muscle Memory: A Survivors Tale, which is being supported via Patreon. Al also has a comic book shop and studio, The Astral Gypsy, in Coventry, U.K., which he runs with his wife, Maggie, often — and always ably — assisted by Yen Quach.
Yen Quach is an award-winning freelance artist, illustrator, and comic artist who works in both digital and traditional media. Reflecting the world with curiosity and creativity, she began the #draweveryday challenge in 2013 and has not missed a day yet. Yen holds a degree in Illustration & Animation. When not drawing, she moonlights as the Astral Assistant for Al Davison and records her forays into the real world through urban sketching. You will rarely find her without a sketchbook of some form.
Halfway through sixth grade, my family moved from Roselle, a diverse working-class neighborhood, to Freehold, New Jersey, an upper-middle class predominantly white living. Thus began the year of silence.
Out of protest, sadness, depression, and puberty I vowed to my parents that I would never ever speak to them again. I later apologized for it, as it was said out of frustration more than anything, but the behavior remained. I wouldn’t speak over a certain volume. I wouldn’t make eye contact when I spoke. I wouldn’t speak unless addressed. My teachers called it selective mutism; my parents called it stubborn; and now they call it ironic. I didn’t have the words to call it anything. I didn’t know that I’d never be more grateful. If Roselle stayed home, I would have never found speech.
Five years later, high school theatre didn’t work out so I followed my best friend to the speech and debate room for the first meeting of the year. According to Mr. Drummond, my first ever coach, there were three fundamental tracks to the art of speech: limited preparation (LP), public address (PA), & interpretation events (IE). Limited preparation events deal with extemporaneous and impromptu speaking. Public address events deal with researching, writing, memorizing and performing informative, communicative, humorous, and persuasive speeches. Interpretation events deal with dramatic and humorous acting events. They showed all three at the Welcome Back Showcase. The president of the team performed a poetry interpretation program, and the power he exuded was enviable. Thirty people in one room stopped and listened in complete silence with full attention for ten minutes to one man. He held the entire room hostage. I had never seen that before. At fourteen years old, I thought, to be a part of a distinguished league of high school speakers, leaders, and influencers (which included Josh Gad, Zac Efron, Oprah, Brad Pitt, Kal Penn, and even more) would have been an honor—one I wasn’t sure I deserved, so ninth grade was a silent year regardless.
I started to compete more regularly in forensics (also known as speech, debate, 4n6, often confused with football or dead bodies) in the tenth grade, doing humorous interpretation and improvisational acting. Improvisational acting was the event that made me. Improv taught me everything about interpretation, everything about acting, everything about self-determination, everything about speaking as a cognitive process and everything about heart. The first time I finaled at a tournament I brought home a tiny fifth-place motorcycle trophy for something I never thought I could do, which was make people laugh with the sound of my voice, and I cried.
Soft voices never really harden, they just get heard.
I got serious about speech after that. I spent hours in the library reading books, suggesting them to all of the novices who had trouble finding literature to perform for competition. The next year, I took on the challenge of teaching the novices the rules and conventions of speech, which meant I had to learn them. Begging my parents to attend the George Mason Institute of Forensics (GMIF), a summer camp for speech kids taught by collegiate performers, definitely turned the tide. I studied and watched the final rounds of the National Tournament every year in someone’s New Jersey basement. Me and my friends who also were serious studied elocution, differing philosophies of acting, the principles of minstrelsy & oratorical education. We held house practices in people’s basements. We practiced monologues over and over for each other, recorded them for ourselves and played them back. We choreographed ourselves. We recorded ourselves. We read each and every ballot after each tournament in a McDonald’s booth. I bought two obnoxiously bright green speech suits and wore them with pride. I read literature, considered the themes I wanted to pick out of the author’s words and what method of interpretation I could take every week. Something that would effectively break walls but not make too many waves. I spent countless nights memorizing and perfecting and trying to get better.
One day, my voice just crystallized in front of me and I realized that the silence was over. No one could ever get me to shut up now. Not even myself. Even if I wanted to. My coach once told me, if you want to be able to change the way you speak, you have to change the way you breathe. Well at point, I’d went from choking to gasping. That’s where the art comes in. The body’s oral system works hard for those ten minutes. The more you are able to control your nose, your mouth, your lungs, your brain…the more you are able to become an extension of yourself.
My first dramatic interpretation (DI) in speech was of the book Warriors Don’t Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals my senior year of high school. Performing the words of that piece allowed me to fall in love with prose again. Warriors Don’t Cry is a compilation of Beals’ high school diary, a sixteen-year-old girl who was part of the Little Rock Nine in Arkansas surrounding the civil rights fight for desegregation. It told the story of a girl trying to make it to seventeen. Approaching my senior year as one of the few Haitian-Americans in a predominantly white school and neighborhood, I was just trying to get to seventeen too. Beals spends pages and pages going through her tumultuous year in Little Rock, holding no parts of herself and the experiences of her classmates back. The themes of hopelessness and the titular advice got me through my senior year of high school. I only semifinaled at our district tournament, meaning I never qualified for high school nationals. But according to Melba, warriors didn’t cry. In the face of injustice, the warrior spirit is flexible. The strength to leave home, go to George Mason, and pursue collegiate forensics competitive success would have been lost on me without Melba. She allowed me to exist outside self.
It was the first time I had ever heard it from my own tongue and the love of prose overwhelms me still. And this love now consumes a community. I’ve met some of my closest friends in speech. People meet their soulmates in this activity. Watching someone bleed for you will always leave tiny scars. We, as a community, heal with constant love.
In 2017, me and my duo partner won the American Forensics Association National Individual Events Tournament in Duo Interpretation, performing a programmatic ten-minute piece about modern day lynching in America. We dedicated our performance to lynching victims around the country and the Memorial of Peace and Justice newly erected in Alabama dedicated to these victims as well. We worked hard to include all sorts of groups and accentuate the details of this performance out of respect for ourselves, the literature, and the activity. Using my voice to speak for groups I can adequately represent allows survivors of injustice to tell their stories and live on. Using my body as their vessel has been one of my greatest honors. Here is where I developed the ideology that we are all walking this Earth considering each other, and that the inside matters more than we will ever know but the outside matters because it protects what’s inside. We would not survive without shelter, and the body we inhabit is shelter. Identity is always grabbing at our bones. So we stand up when we can. I do believe that those who are truly and inherently neutral comply to the system and therefore aid systems of oppression. Along this vein, those who do speech are the ones consistently disrupting the status quo.
I’m currently a rising senior at George Mason University, majoring in Public Administration. There are a lot of reasons I love GMU but I can definitely say that I picked and attended my college for speech. Graduating high school, I knew hell was a place without speech. Hell was a world where that could get taken away in an instant. After I graduated high school, our coach and our program stepped down. After my sophomore year in college, our Assistant Director of Forensics stepped down too. This year, after the Director of Forensics for our team left, I don’t think our team knew how to breathe. We were already walking around with open wounds. I have been doing speech and debate for seven years. Seven years ago, I didn’t have something that I knew would never give up on me, ever, as long as I never gave up on it. Speech has been the greatest love of my life. I have never practiced unconditional love before. But after the year our team has had, speech was the world’s most beautiful rose, with dried blood on the thorns, accepting the community’s flaws as necessary evils. Out of love for my art, I have lost sleep, lost job opportunities, lost focus in school, lost money, lost people, and almost lost my mind.
The biggest nightmare about speech is that it is such a diverse and beautiful community full of gorgeous and talented people who spend their weekends laying at the feet of a panel of men. They bare their soul and ask for a fair rank and are given back sexism, racism, classism, and problematic rhetoric time and time again. Microaggressions within the community began to creep on me. Judges and coaches in our community have always held all the power. They are the ones who decide who advances and keeps speaking. They’re usually older, straight, white males. To appease speech traditionalists, droves of us have been made to wear pantyhose, heels, full makeup, forbidden to wear pantsuits, and made to alter our bodies in sometimes unhealthy ways. Coaches have told me to smile wider to appear likeable even at my breaking points. It has made me stretch parts of myself for the amusement of those in power. Some have belittled the stories of survivors, pitted traumas against each other, criticized appearance on ballots more times than I can count, said things that they would never say to anyone’s face about things they would never be able to understand. Being judged on how beautiful I can make struggle, how appealing I can make my suffering, how pretty I can make myself cry for the benefit of an audience whose integrity has shifted has made me question the art of competitive public speaking recently. Highlighting the voices of people who didn’t have this platform was the most rewarding thing, not the trophy. Speech has made me who I am today but I have to recognize the hurt it has caused me as a young black woman. As the next generation of competitors rolls onto a field of so much potential, we have no choice but to leave it better than when we found it.
The speech community allows one to be able to participate in the facilitation of emerging action in this era. Entering a defining period of this world, the importance of voice has never been more compromised. Being part of something that bolsters an era of change, the words behind a revolutionary thing, has been integral to our heart. These messages deserve a home and an eternal story. Leaders, icons, competitors, coaches, and speakers like the ones I have gotten the privilege to compete against do the real dirty work under the grassroots in my head. Speech has provided a place for us as artists, creators, makers, and influences of great societal innovation. Language has always been a gift worth regifting. Every summer, working GMIF turns me into witness as young people grasp the power of voice and advocacy through words, their own and others, as a tool for social innovation and cultural change. The kids there keep something beyond themselves going and they haven’t even opened their mouths yet.
Writing offers us an incomparable opportunity to disappear.
I personally hold that words have no intrinsic meaning. What is it about the word “girl,” for example, that specifically encapsulates the idea of a girl? If the word “girl” really is inextricably, objectively tied to the concept of a girl, why do other people talk about ein mädchen, yek dokhtar, une fille? Words are given meaning by our collective agreement to use them—these little clusters of sound—to refer to specific concepts and ideas.
This means that when I write, the text I create is just a representation of what I want to say, not an exact reproduction. The words have meaning to me when I write them, and meaning to you when you read them, but those two meanings will never be exactly the same. Words that have particularly sinister or positive connotations to me might well mean nothing to you, and vice versa.
Imagine a little girl in a brightly-lit room. What does the image make you feel?
I don’t know who you are. When I write, I’m writing to a ghost of you, a reader that doesn’t really exist. You, in turn, read these words and hear a voice that is simultaneously me and someone else entirely. No matter how honestly I write, your understanding will be shaped by your own experiences and ideas, not mine.
I can, of course, change the voice with which I speak, with the aim of generating a specific effect. I can do my best imitation of a man, a woman, a child. What I can’t do is choose who reads the words I write. I can’t know how you feel about men, women, children, and I can’t choose what kind of imaginary writer you enter into conversation with.
These words exist in the middle of this dialogue between ghosts. It’s a space where meaning is in flux, where I create endless numbers of endlessly shifting identities, all of them mine and none of them exactly me. In that space, I can’t help but disappear.
These words exist in the middle of this dialogue between ghosts. It’s a space where meaning is in flux… In that space, I can’t help but disappear.
In “real” life I work with refugees. When I first started the process of medically transitioning, I was about to begin a community project with unaccompanied refugee minors. I’d considered pulling out of the project altogether. I didn’t know how much I would change and how quickly, and I didn’t know if it was fair to force vulnerable young people to interact with someone who was physically otherin a way that might make them uncomfortable.
I emailed the project organiser to express my concerns.
“Olive,” her reply began. “Thank you so much for speaking your truth.”
The idea of speaking my truth is a difficult one for me, because in many ways, my daily life is composed of lies I cannot help but tell.
Here is one of my truths: I cannot reliably pass as male or female. On a personal level, this suits me well; having never identified as a man or a woman, realising that I could physically become something approaching neutral was a revelation.
Out in the real world, things are more difficult. Whilst I could, theoretically, consistently refuse to inhabit either a male or female role, in reality it would make life almost unliveable. The vast majority of people will read me as one or the other, and telling everyone I meet that I’m actually neither is inconvenient at best and actively dangerous at worst.
So I lie. Sometimes intentionally and sometimes because I simply have no opportunity to tell the truth. Buying cigarettes, I make an active effort to pass as female, because if the cashier reads me as a teenage boy—my other option—they will refuse to serve me, or worse. I am now on first-name terms with the security guard at my local supermarket, having had a ten-minute argument with him regarding whether I do or do not have a vagina after he had tried to physically remove me from the whiskey aisle. (Entertaining? Yes! An experience I want to repeat? Absolutely not.) In public toilets and on buses late at night, I hunch my shoulders and stare at my phone, because in those situations it is infinitely safer to be a teenage boy than a queer woman.
Ideally, I should never feel like speaking my truth is wrong, even if it might be dangerous. But my own principles tend to fall apart in the face of more pragmatic concerns. When a teenage boy in the middle of a sprawling refugee camp tells me about his experiences of police brutality, in a language that literally does not have a word for “transgender,” am I going to correct him when he calls me “khanoum”? When I return a lost child to her mother and she kisses me on the cheek and calls me “sister,” am I going to object?
That’s a truth that I often cannot speak to others. Here’s one that I often cannot admit to myself:
I am a trauma survivor.
Recovering from childhood trauma works something like this: You are subject to a hurt and a violation that is too horrific to face; much like a light that is too bright to see or a heat so searing that it feels cold, your mind cannot physically process it. In response, your brain develops ways to deal with the experience without facing it head-on. Mostly this is a case of brutal self-distraction and control—substance abuse, self-harm, eating disorders. Recovery usually means processing your experiences painstakingly slowly, in situations where you feel safe, whilst gradually reducing your reliance on self-destructive coping mechanisms.
I tend to think of it as a badly-broken leg that has healed wrong. You learn to avoid walking on it because it can’t take your weight. Your new way of walking will twist your spine, ruin your joints, and cause you pain, but it will allow you to function. To fix it, you’ll need to break the bone and re-set it, and then—slowly—learn how to walk in a way that doesn’t hurt.
I tend to think of it as a badly-broken leg that has healed wrong. You learn to avoid walking on it because it can’t take your weight… To fix it, you’ll need to break the bone and re-set it, and then—slowly—learn how to walk in a way that doesn’t hurt.
Forcing someone to face a traumatic experience when they’re not ready is about as therapeutic as forcing someone to walk on a broken leg.
I am transgender. I was sexually abused as a child. These are truths I’ve been forced to speak—in doctors’ offices and gender clinics, to my family, to my friends, to strangers at work—so many times that not only have the words ceased to be empowering, they have also ceased to have any personal relevance to me. Having an identity and experiences that differ from the norm, especially when those differences are visible, means constantly having to explain yourself on other people’s terms. When I say these words aloud, I enter into a conversation with someone who is talking not to me, but to their idea of a transgender trauma survivor, a composite figure made of all the other narratives about gender identity and trauma that they’ve ever encountered.
These are also truths which often cannot be spoken, for reasons of personal safety and lack of vocabulary, or because they represent a horror that is by nature unspeakable. They are truths that exist in conflict with each other, constantly calling each other’s validity into question. What if I’m making it up? What if I only think I’m transgender because transitioning allows me to destroy the little girl in that brightly-lit room into which I, even now, cannot look? What if I am too scared to transition fully because it means ceasing to be that girl, and becoming the man standing behind her instead? My truth is one of uncertainty, a constant internal dialogue between shifting identities—man, woman, child—all potentially false.
My truth is one of uncertainty, a constant internal dialogue between shifting identities—man, woman, child—all potentially false.
People often talk about writing as a way to speak your truth, but for me, the primary lure of writing is that it allows me to speak my lies, too.
I don’t know how to speak my truth, because I’m not sure that I have a truth to speak. My lived experience is composed of multiple identities and histories, all of them potentially false, and some of them impossible to face. In writing, this uncertainty is not only acceptable, but unavoidable. There’s no way for you and I to be certain that we are reading this text in the same way; we both know that the meaning of these words is in flux.
People often talk about writing as a way to speak your truth, but for me, the primary lure of writing is that it allows me to speak my lies, too.
This is a space in which I don’t have to present my identity as a truth to be spoken, but can show you myself as a mosaic of uncertainties and shifting identities, all of them neither true nor false.
Imagine a teenage boy. Imagine a queer woman. Imagine a little girl in a brightly-lit room.
Only here can they exist in dialogue with each other. That dialogue between them is my truth.
Nicola Yoon's "Everything, Everything" Is Everything
As a teen, I had a soft spot for contemporary YA romance. I especially enjoyed the romance in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares.
I liked these books because the female characters showed me that even if you had personal issues, you could still find love. However, at some point, I found myself asking, “Why can’t black girls have a YA romance?”
Carmen Lowell, a half Puerto Rican character from the Traveling Pants series, was one of the few women of color I read in YA romance. I enjoyed reading about her because she was caring toward her family and friends and pursued a romantic relationship despite her confidence issues. However, by the end of the final book, Sisterhood Everlasting, she is the only one not in a relationship. Although she is very satisfied with her life, it bothered me that she couldn’t be married or dating someone when she is the only lead of color.
I found myself asking, “Why can’t black girls have a YA romance?”
In addition to being one of the few women of color in YA romance, Carmen Lowell was the only female character of color I read who had happy romances. Other books like Sharon M. Draper’s Romiette and Julio and Jacqueline Woodson’s If You Come Softly had black female romantic leads, but their relationships also involved social issues. Both Romiette and Julio and If You Come Softly dealt with the racism that came with being in interracial relationships. While I was impressed by both authors’ takes on this important issue, part of me also wanted a book with a romance free of social tension.
Last year, I discovered Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything when it became a New York Times bestseller. After doing some research, I discovered that this book not only had black female lead but was also written by a black author. After waiting several months, I borrowed a copy from my local library to read and was totally enamored by the book. If this book were food, it would be cotton candy, filled with fluffy, sugary sweet moments that melted on my heart.
If this book were food, it would be cotton candy, filled with fluffy, sugary sweet moments that melted on my heart.
One of the things I enjoyed most about the book is the main character, Madeline Whittler. Even though she is isolated from the world, she isn’t portrayed in a negative light. Instead, she is a quirky young girl who loves books and board games and yearns to experience life more fully. She spoke to my teen self, the me that had a hard time fitting in. In addition, Maddie being African American and Japanese gave me the long awaited representation I wanted as a black and Vietnamese person. As someone who rarely saw biracial characters who were black and Asian, this was very validating.
In addition to enjoying Maddie’s character, I liked that her romance happened gradually. Maddie Whittler can’t touch anyone or go outside the house because she has a rare disease that makes her allergic to everything. As a result, she has to communicate with Olly online and through each other’s windows. (They use mirror writing.) For a time, she is also allowed to have quarantined visits from him as long as they don’t touch each other. This makes the moments when they can interact in person all the more precious.
Black YA leads in films are just as rare as black YA romance leads, and people have been craving this.
Out of all my favorite moments between Maddie and Ollie, my favorite is when they kiss for the very first time. At this point, they’ve only touched once before without anyone knowing. Maddie and Ollie’s feelings for each other have grown to the point where they can’t keep it to themselves anymore. They need to touch each other and express their feelings to validate them. The kiss is so beautiful and special, and Maddy savors it.
By the time I had finished the book, I had been thoroughly entertained and even taught a few lessons. The most important lesson is summed up in the quote, “Love is worth everything, everything.” This book shows that whether it is romantic love or familial love, it is worth experiencing and fighting for. It is a simple yet relatable message that makes the book memorable.
In addition to being ecstatic about the book itself, I am also excited for the movie adaptation, which will star Amandla Sternberg and Nick Robinson. When I heard this news, I was so thankful. Black YA leads in films are just as rare as black YA romance leads, and people have been craving this. Last year, Twitter user Mariah started the hashtag #WOCforAlaskaYoung in response to the casting call for the YA film Looking for Alaska. She and many others tweeted that they wanted Alaska to be played by a woman of color. Even John Green, the author of the book being adapted, stated that he supported the campaign.
Everything, Everything is everything I always wanted in a YA romance, and that is amazing.
Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything shows that black girls can have a happy young adult romance. It provides some much-needed representation on the page and tells a beautiful story of love. If the movie is as successful as the book, then hopefully we can get more books and movies with black female leads. Right now, Everything, Everything is everything I always wanted in a YA romance, and that is amazing.
The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.
Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.
When I was a teen, the most relatable young adult book I ever read was The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.
The Outsiders validated my experiences with being out of place among my peers and made me feel that my own story could be valuable someday. However, it also made me conscious of my ethnicity, especially since all of the characters were white.
Inspired by the real-life clashes of two high school gangs known as The Greasers and The Socs, the book is told from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old Greaser named Ponyboy Curtis. Published in 1967, the book is such a popular classic that it is required reading for many middle school and high school students.
The Outsiders validated my experiences with being out of place among my peers and made me feel that my own story could be valuable someday. However, it also made me conscious of my ethnicity, especially since all of the characters were white.
As I read more YA books as a teen, I noticed that there weren’t a lot of books with black characters that had the same impact as The Outsiders. Although there were black YA authors like Sharon M. Draper and Walter Dean Myers, I couldn’t connect to their stories. Most of the books by black YA authors that I read discussed socioeconomic issues like teen pregnancy, racism, and rape. While I knew that there were black teens who did experience these things, I wasn’t one of them. I was a nerdy black misfit who felt like no one could see the real me.
Most of the books by black YA authors that I read discussed socioeconomic issues like teen pregnancy, racism, and rape. While I knew that there were black teens who did experience these things, I wasn’t one of them. I was a nerdy black misfit who felt like no one could see the real me.
Besides The Outsiders, the only book that I connected to was Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes. Not only was Bronx Masquerade written by a black author, but it also featured many characters of color. Written in verse, the book uses the style of a poetry slam to tell the thoughts and emotions of eighteen teens as they navigate their identity. The book spoke to me as a budding poet who was unsure whether or not my point of view was valuable. As the first novel I read in verse, the book showed me a unique way to tell my story. However, as influential as this book was, I would soon forget about it.
Since I couldn’t find any other books I could relate to, I ended up reading more YA by white authors than black. Between high school and college, I read many contemporary and YA fantasy authors, including Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Richelle Mead, and Suzanne Collins. The only black YA author I read was Jacqueline Woodson. She stood out to me because her work included coming-of-age stories with black characters that didn’t feel generic at all. Although I couldn’t relate to any of it, I still appreciated it. Some of her work is influenced by poetry, especially titles such as If You Come Softly and Brown Girl Dreaming.
As a result of reading mostly white YA authors, I started to feel like I could never truly belong in YA literature. I wanted a black character in a John Green romance and a black character who was magical like Harry Potter, but they seemed hard to find. Black teens had experiences that were just as varied and complex as those of white teens, but I kept seeing the same stories getting told and being published. I eventually forgot about Bronx Masquerade because it reminded me of how rarely I could find stories that related to me.
In 2015, I bought Daniel Jose Older’s Shadowshaper after seeing that it was an YA urban fantasy book with an Afro-Latina protagonist. I also discovered the grassroots book campaign We Need Diverse Books and the contemporary YA book Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera. All of them would plant the seed for a new relationship with YA books.
Shadowshaper was the most incredible book I’d read in a long time. It combined art and the supernatural for a creative, awesome magic system. It was set in a culturally rich environment that was palpable and interesting. It dealt with real-life issues including colorism, gentrification, and cultural appropriation. To top it off, there was a diverse, inclusive cast of characters that entertained and related to me. Shadowshaper began to reshape my opinion of YA literature by massaging my senses with words and color.
While Shadowshaper changed my opinion of YA fantasy and sci-fi, Juliet Takes a Breath changed my opinion of contemporary YA. I ended up reading the book twice within two months and writing a feature article to help promote it. This book became my best friend, one that I wanted to keep turning to for guidance and empathy. Victor Hugo once wrote that books were cold but safe friends, but this book is one of the warmest things I have read. After reading Shadowshaper and Juliet Takes a Breath, I became determined to find the books I wanted to read as a teen and spread the word about them.
After reading Shadowshaper and Juliet Takes a Breath, I became determined to find the books I wanted to read as a teen and spread the word about them.
Afro YA books matter because black teens need to see themselves in words. They matter because I am feeding myself books I should have devoured as teen. They matter because The Outsiders showed me my worth as a writer, while Brown Girl Dreaming showed me my worth as a black writer.
We Need Diverse Books has been saying what I felt throughout my teens and early twenties: We need diverse books, and we demand them. We demand them, we uplift the authors who write and represent them, and we tell the world about them. We have always been here, and we aren’t going anywhere.
The Afro YA promotes black young adult authors and YA books with black characters, especially those that influence Pennington, an aspiring YA author who believes that black YA readers need diverse books, creators, and stories so that they don’t have to search for their experiences like she did.
Latonya Pennington is a poet and freelance pop culture critic. Their freelance work can also be found at PRIDE, Wear Your Voice magazine, and Black Sci-fi. As a poet, they have been published in Fiyah Lit magazine, Scribes of Nyota, and Argot magazine among others.
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