Q

Anonymous asked:

Hi! I'm a WOC and I'm currently revising my YA contemporary for querying. My MC shares only half of my heritage(she's biracial) but her experiences are prevalent to mine and plays an important part in the story. Does this count as #ownvoices or not? I'm genuinely confused.

A

In my opinion, yes, it’s #ownvoices. You don’t have the exact experience of a biracial MC… but you ARE [x-heritage], and if you are American, at least, you have probably been steeped in “white culture” your whole life, so I’d wager you know a lot about BOTH sides of your MC’s background. 

Being bi-racial of course might bring up concerns/questions for your character that are not identical to your own concerns/questions - but like, that’s fair - your main character is her own person, and that’s where empathy comes in. And I think it is easier to be empathetic and write a fully realized individual character if you are coming from a place of bone-deep knowledge. Which you are.

I mean, look - unless you are literally writing your own memoir, no main character is going to be a carbon copy of you. That’s not how books work (and frankly, if it WAS, it would be boring - most writers, bless them, really like *sitting in a room writing*, which doesn’t make for the MOST compelling adventure story!) I think OwnVoices is more about, do you have the authority to write a certain culture with confidence. And you do.