Novelists From Jamaica

"(Are you consciously taking a new look at the future?) NH: No. I'm drawing pretty heavily on the science fiction and fantasy I read growing up. I also come out of a very strong Caribbean literary tradition. In that sense I'm kind of marrying the two, but not in a way of "trying to go out there and do something new." I'm like any other writer. There are a handful of us, if we're talking about solely Caribbean writers -- there's Claude Michel Prevost…Tobias Buckell. I've found that science fiction reviewers tend to react most strongly to the Caribbean-flavored stuff, and some of them identify that as being new and over-focus on it. I'm starting to feel I might be getting typecast. (with Indiebound)"

"for me to exist in this world I have to have a radical agenda because the world has got to change in order for people like me to be able to exist...I need to have a radical agenda. I need to make a world where it is perfectly okay that I'm attracted to people who live inbetween genders. I think that should not be a problem. I can't change. The world has to change."

"In the fantastical genres there is an idea that the world can change. And that to me is immensely hopeful."

"The metaphors we use in the west come from Greek and European mythology. Aishu in West African religious mythology is the deity I use in Midnight Robber. Aishu said: "I would like to go everywhere and see everything." a perfect metaphor for artificial intelligence. Black people have a rich spiritual heritage, as well as a rich imaginative life-stories handed down over centuries-that inform our ideas of the future. They need to be on the table like everybody else's."

"When people ask me to define science fiction and fantasy I say they are the literatures that explore the fact that we are toolmakers and users, and are always changing our environment."

"Writers have to live in more than two worlds. The intellectual life of the Caribbean was available to me when I was growing up, through my parents, but being a science fiction and fantasy reader was strange. (There are still very few people in the Caribbean writing SF.) But I think being Caribbean, you're aware of being a multiplicity. Pretty much all of us who come from there are of mixed-race backgrounds, no matter what we look like. And they are really pluralist societies -- have been for centuries, though of course there are similar issues of systemic racism."

"Every so often I come up with a different definition of what science fiction and fantasy do, and I'm always looking for one that describes what they both do, rather than separating them. Currently I'm saying that one of the things they do is look at the effects of large-scale social change on both populations and individuals. Fantasy tends to look to the past, and science fiction to the future, but what is common to many of the stories is change: huge societal upheaval."

"…Even though we talk about race a lot in the literature, there’s still this idea of “Well, if we make this person blue and give them pointy ears, then we don’t have to actually talk about what’s happening in the real world.” And those of us who live in racialized bodies feel that lack, we feel that erasure, so yes, there was something quite deliberate in my doing half the speech as an alien."

"…There’s still this notion that you are somehow morally superior if you don’t know anything about the background of the writers you read, and I maintain that writers have every right to not talk their backgrounds, that’s fine, but when people do and it’s important to their work, to not know doesn’t mean you’re morally superior, it means you are indifferent…"

"It’s the beautiful thing about being a fiction writer; you can write the world you want to see."

"They say that writing is a solitary sport, but it isn’t, really. It doesn’t have to be. Some people are really happy about writing alone, but some people actually suffer from the isolation. (2024)"

"I enjoy exploring my connection to Caribbean vernacular – or, any vernacular. I love how people actually speak. There is an art and a poetry and a beauty and a logic to it that, to me, is undeniable. There’s no such thing as bad language, in my mind. (2024)"

"I’ve learned, don’t fight too hard when readers say, ‘You got this wrong.’ There’s a very good chance you got it wrong. I’ve started to think of it as them being helpful – that’s what’s best for my psyche. (2024)"

"I know how reality goes. I’m already caught up in an interesting life. I don’t need to write about it...I prefer fantasy and science fiction. They’re genres that actively say that change is possible."

"Labels are very important to me. They’re a way of finding community and a way of community finding you. If people are looking for my work because they’re looking for the work of another woman or the work of a science fiction writer or a black writer, it helps if they know that I am that. For me, identity is kind of a mailbox."

"Science fiction is a literature that explores the fact that human beings are part of social systems and that social systems change. It explores social change and the human change that both drives it and is affected by it. Fantasy, which I write more than I write science fiction, is a literature that explores the stories we tell to explain the inexplicable. It also explores human nature. Fantasy pays homage to folklore and folklore talks a lot about archetypes. Fantasy explores those archetypes and also explores the way we tell stories to explain things like why there’s a moon in the sky or things that we have no explanation for, but we believe. Fantasy explores what we believe."

"We live in a racist world, and there’s no less racism [in the science fiction community] than anywhere else. But the nice thing about the science fiction community is that it’s very accepting of a challenge, of something new. We’re all a community of eggheads. We like knowing stuff. For the most part, [sci-fi readers] open the book and...get very interested in the language and the world and culture I’m talking about."

"Reading people like James Baldwin [made me realise] that, if you’re an artist, there’s no reason not to make art out of anything. Sex is a big part of the human experience. It’s something that we’re hardwired to think about. Why would you avoid making art about something that is so all-encompassingly important to human beings?"

"The other challenge I see is that of the diversity of expression in speculative fiction. The readers seem to come from all over the place, but the writing that gets published (or that gets marketed as SF) still comes from a fairly narrow range of experience. The imaginative worlds that we're creating still draw heavily on Greek and Roman mythology and on Euro-Celtic folktales, and the futures we imagine still feel pretty Western middle class. And that's fair enough, because it's the primary cultural context in which many of the writers are situated. Some excellent writing has come and is coming out of those experiences. However, I also want to see more writing from the vast range of cultural contexts which makes up the world. (2000)"

"I think inserting yourself into a place where you are told you don't belong, when you know quite well you do, is important work. (2017)"

"There is so much vibrant work coming out, and more and more of it beginning to come out from, and depicting, a broader range of humanity. (2017)"

"why have things shifted a little? I think that at root it's the vocal, persistent activism of the ones most affected; the people who need positive change. (2021)"

"there are aspects of it [teaching] that are not at all enjoyable. But that "lively exchange of ideas" thing? That satisfaction you feel when a student's world expands a bit? Those are real. (2021)"

"What's needed instead is to state up front at submission time that you want to see submissions from authors of color; to include people of color in significant positions on your staff (editorial, marketing, etc.); to educate yourself to the ways in which cultural specificity results in stories being told differently, signifying differently on race, culture, fashion, language, you name it; to recognize that "not seeing race" means that they also can't perceive structural racism; to grasp that racism isn't just a stoned white male musician ranting at his concert that all people of color should be kicked out of the UK. I suspect that only if you do that groundwork will you be able to assess submissions from authors of color on an equal footing with white authors. The Anglophone market is still hugely skewed in overwhelming favor of straight, white, male authors. There are still nowhere near enough translations from other languages into English. (2021)"

"(IL: So why do you think the SF community is more willing to discuss gay/lesbian issues versus race issues?) NH: Yeah, why do I think that is? Because queerness is still seen as a white issue, to the irritation to those of us who are both of color and queer."

"[about writing science fiction with an African sensibility] You have to reinvent the language. You have to craft some bizarre amalgam of the sensibility you're trying to bring and a science fiction sensibility... you're grafting two things together that did not grow together, and it's difficult to do that successfully."

"I'd like to see support right through the various forms, the various artistic disciplines for artists of color who are interested in futuristic and fantastical visions. I'd like to see us really start to make them welcome because they bring a different vision. We bring a different vision and that will change the genre, and the genre is about change."

"to be color-blind in a racist world is to not be an ally...if the playing field isn't level, and you're not doing anything to make it level, you aren't actually being fair."