I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Somehow, I realized I could write books about black characters who reflected my own experiences or otherworldly experiences - not just stories of history, poverty and oppression.
Black people were very angry with me for writing the book. A lot of people didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me, and that used to really bother me. It was a very painful and difficult time.
In my time since moving to the United States, I've found that there is a dearth of great writing for black people. There are stories that depict us in a way that isn't cliched or niche, and that a white person, a Chinese person, an Indian person can watch and relate to. Those are the stories I want to be a part of telling.
I always crave to see more stories about and by people of color, particularly new work by young black writers.
The African Americans' story is one that seems to be a repeated commitment to a scenario for success and failure. With each failure, the blow is that much more traumatizing until finally one reaches a point where there is to some degree an internalization, skepticism, fatalism, and expectation that it isn't going to work.
In all my novels, I deal with the many problems and prejudices which exist for Black people in Britain today.
My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.
I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities.
And no book gives a deeper insight into the inner life of the Negro, his struggles and his aspirations, than, The Souls of Black Folk.
I write for myself, and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.
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