Zitat des Tages von Marlon James:
A lot of time, I'd spell things in standard English instead of phonetically because I want people to understand what's going on. It's also very lyrical, and the great thing about lyrical prose is even when you're not totally sure of the words, you can be swayed by the musicality of it.
'The Daily Mail' interviewed my friends in Jamaica to find out if I was ever the victim of a vicious homophobic attack because, to them, I'm a gay refugee. But nothing like that happened. So, no surprise, that story didn't appear. I'm really pretty boring.
I'm happy to not know what I think about stuff; I'm happy to change my mind. But it's relatively recently that I've been able to apply that to feelings. I used to like to know what I felt. I didn't want those feelings to be complicated or muddled or clashing.
We're not big on irony in Jamaica, sarcasm and double-talk. We tend to say things plainly, sometimes to the point of boredom.
As a writer of colour, you have to be victim or perpetrator.
The fiction writer in me likes gaps in stories because I can jump into that gap and try to suggest something.
I think, for me, there's The Book I Should Write and The Book I Wanted to Write - and they weren't the same book. The Book I Should Write should be realistic, since I studied English Lit. It should be cultural. It should reflect where I am today. The Book I Wanted to Write would probably include flying women, magic, and all of that.
At 28 years old, seven years out of college, I was so convinced that my voice outed me as a fag that I had stopped speaking to people I didn't know.
I wanted a picture of Jamaica that isn't in books, and certainly not in novels.
I grew up with reggae. Reggae is like family. I know it, and there's a type of love and familiarity, but sometimes you want to hang out with other people.
Not every gay person recites poetry or has read Keats. You can get readers through anything if the characters are complicated. You can't dismiss Josey Wales' quite liberal worldview.
Because homophobia is still largely driven by the church, it's legitimised. It's also tied to sexism, because those two are never far apart.
There was never a single murder in my neighbourhood; there was barely a robbery. It was so suburban, it was almost disappointing.
