Q&A with Natasha Díaz, Author of Color Me InPosted in Articles, Autobiography, Identity Development/Psychology, Interviews, Media Archive, Passing, United States on 2019-01-27 23:55Z by Steven |
Q&A with Natasha Díaz, Author of Color Me In
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2018-12-21
We love hearing from new voices in YA!
In Color Me In, debut Author Natasha Díaz pulls from her personal experience to create a powerful, relatable, coming-of-age novel. We can’t wait for this beauty to hit shelves on 8/20/19. Get to know Natasha Díaz in the Q&A below!
Color Me In is based on your personal experiences. What inspired you to tell this story? Can you tell us a little bit about your background?
I’m the only person on my mom’s side of the family who looks the way that I do, and as a result, I have witnessed blatant racism since I was a child; it just was never directed at me. So often I find that narratives about biracial/multiracial, white-passing characters delve deeply into their internal struggle but rarely touch on the privileges and colorism that are inherently tied to those of us who are mixed and also pass as white. What has been directed at me is an unending amount of microaggression, which led to debilitating self-doubt that I don’t have the right to claim myself entirely. Color Me In was my chance to write the book I never had growing up: a story that acknowledges the privileges of being white-passing without in any way detracting from the right that we as mixed-race people have to own our identities…
Read the entire interview here.