So way back in July, we sat down with an author friend Shirra Lynn. She is the author of Love and War as well as Quartet and invited us to sit down with her and discuss a topic that will have a bunch of different answers depending on who you ask.

How do you tell your audience your heroine is Black?

We’re still trying to figure that out! It was a fun conversation that not only allowed both of us to understand each other better (Shirra Lynn is African-American, whilst we are Black Cubans) but discusses the challenges of how we succeed and fail at hinting at the character’s Blackness.

We struggle more at some characters more than others, as being Black folk that exist in Latine/Latinx spaces, it is a challenge to showcase how Blackness is in those spaces when non-Latine/Latinx see Black and white Latine culture as the same.

Black American and white American cultures are vastly different, so we liken it to that. Whereas our Black American characters and characters with very specific ties to Africa we don’t have that issue.

It won’t be solved in an hour conversation, but we had fun having it and look forward to more people creating this dialogue inter-culturally!

Y’all should totally check it out on September 14th!

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