Nigerian - Writer | -
We've been told the same story for so long. We've seen literally 1,000 'Lord of the Rings' movies.
Tomi Adeyemi
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My very first story, I was around 5, and I really just wrote myself. When I was 5, I loved myself so much I gave myself a twin named Tomi. Everything started out fine. But then I didn't write another black character until I was 18.
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I spent 12 years of my life writing stories without black people. That's insane to me. It's insane that I could have believed in magical portals and dragons and all that stuff, but to believe a black person could be experiencing those things was unimaginable.
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My freshman year of college, 'The Hunger Games' movie adaptation came out, and I was really excited about it. This was maybe 2011. I loved it, but there was a lot of hateful backlash against the black characters in the film.
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There's so much talk of representation in politics and entertainment - it's everywhere - but I didn't realize representation was important until really my senior year of high school.
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In terms of people who want to be writers, I wish more people knew how much work it was.
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The power of fantasy is that you can make people understand the deeper realities of our world in a way that they wouldn't normally be able to because of all the things in our world that closes them off.
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What's demanded from us black creatives is both a blessing and a curse, because it pushes you to be your absolute best. You cannot be anything less.
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Part of the reason everyone is freaking out over 'Black Panther' is because we've never seen it. We have two thousand years of stories, and we've never seen it.
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I had a lot of different reasons for writing the book, but at its core was the desire to write for black teenage girls growing up reading books they were absent from. That was my experience as a child. 'Children of Blood and Bone' is a chance to address that. To say you are seen.
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In my perfect world, we'd have one black girl fantasy book every month. We need them, and we need fantasy stories about black boys as well.
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Imagination is a funny thing - we sometimes need to see something before we can truly picture it.
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