Alex asked Celeste Ng:

Hi Celeste! Everything I Never Told You helped me through a very similar time in which I played a role similar to James in my family. It filled me with pride as a biracial Asian to see the representation your novel brought about, and wanted to ask what do you think it will take for more diverse works like yours to receive such widespread acclaim and attention?

Celeste Ng This is something really important to me. I hope that publishing--and the reading public--is starting to see the value of having many different works by many different kinds of writers, of all backgrounds. I think a lot about Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's talk about the "single story"--you can see it here (https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_... how representation is more than a series of checkboxes, it's a real plurality of viewpoints. As a writer who's had some success, I see my job as advocating for more writers to get to tell *their* stories--in other words, making more seats at the table. Those of us who've gotten the spotlight, in other words, have a duty to try and share it with others.

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