I don’t think, for instance, that it was publicly known that she suffers from the genetic illness sickle cell (when she recorded an appeal for the Sickle Cell Society in 2016, they said only that she was “familiar with the disorder” having written a book whose protagonist had the condition). There’s even the hint, though little developed, that Blackman may not be neurotypical.įor a writer with her reach and success, Blackman has tended to keep quite private. She circles these points, often painfully, in memory. The arrangement means that some pivotal points in her life are re-told or approached from different angles – but it has the effect of drawing the reader into Blackman’s consciousness more effectively.
She didn’t.Īs she sets out here, what became a stellar career in writing for children and young adults was founded on grim determination, taking writing course after writing course, reworking her first novel Hacker from top to bottom, confounding the “soft racism of low expectations” – the schoolteacher who told her black girls don’t become English teachers – and the less soft racism of a publishing industry that showed no interest in publishing children’s stories with black protagonists.Īptly, then, is “Perseverance” the title of one of the chapters of a memoir organised thematically rather than chronologically – the others are “Wonder”, “Loss”, “Anger”, “Representation” and “Love” – and which hops between poetry and Blackman’s loose and chatty prose. She had bolstered her determination by queuing for three hours to see her heroine Alice Walker at a bookshop event in London: she asked Walker to write “don’t give up” in the front of her book.
Whats a memoir series#
The author of the Noughts and Crosses series had more than 70 rejection letters from publishers before her first book was published. She’s a grafter, is Malorie Blackman no question about that.
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