'BAME writers must tell their own stories – and we have to be disruptive'
In a series to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, author Tanya Byrne says true diversity in books for young people is shamefully overdue
As a BAME author who writes BAME characters, I’m frequently asked to explain why my books are so unusual. They’re not unusual, at least I don’t think they are. My books are about teenagers doing what teenagers do, trying to find their place in the world and fucking it up along the way. The fact that some of my characters are Nigerian or Jamaican or, in the case of my story for the new anthology A Change is Gonna Come, Guyanese, doesn’t make them unusual. It just means that my books reflect the world in which we live, as all books should.
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