Writers of Color: Your Voice Matters by Vanessa Mártir

Laura Pegram

March 8, 2015

Writers of Color: Your Voice Matters by Vanessa Mártir

What the heck is “voice”? By this, do editors mean “style”? I do not think so. By voice, I think they mean not only a unique way of putting words together, but a unique sensibility, a distinctive way of looking at the world, an outlook that enriches an author’s oeuvre. They want to read an author who is like no other. An original. A standout. A voice.

Think about your favorite author’s voice. Can’t you recognize their writing immediately? Why? Because of how it sounds to you when you read it. Because you know they’re going to speak of certain things and do something that is trademark theirs.

Laura Pegram

December 22, 2014

Home Base by Xu Xi

Laura Pegram

December 22, 2014

In 2014, my living space is a bedsit on the rooftop of my mother’s top floor flat, where I live and work in the city that was home, to help care for a woman who no longer knows who I am.

For awhile, my sibs and I had contemplated the China Coast, the only English speaking home for the aged in Hong Kong. Mum’s Cantonese has never been fluent, and, as the prions continued their maniacal play doh twists and turns, her tongue lost more Cantonese—her fourth, mostly illiterate language—than her literate third one, English.

Photo credit: Paul Hilton

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