“One of the things that writers worry about is finding a voice. I don't think it's a thing that you find so much as it is something that comes to you, or that presents itself.” ThinkingVoiceWorryFindings Author:Ayana Mathis
“I think being consistent is really important. In the arts there's a misconception that you sit around waiting for the muse to come, and that it's all really mystical and mysterious. In reality, sometimes you have to fake it till you make it.” ThinkingArtImportantSometimesRealityWaitingMysteriousFakeConsistentMuseMysticalMisconception Author:Ayana Mathis
“All of us, writers and non-writers alike, have incredible well-springs of personal experience and history. And we also have imagination - which I think is a kind of human miracle.” ThinkingHumansWellsKindImaginationSpringMiracleIncrediblesPersonal Experiences Author:Ayana Mathis
“I think that if you just write your characters you end up with something that people can access.” PeopleIfsThinkingWritingEndsCharacterAccess Author:Ayana Mathis
“I think that people have some sort of vision that everybody is moving towards perfection, and that there is some sort of set steps or something like that that you can move through to get to that place, and that that's sort of the project of being alive.” PeopleThinkingMovingVisionStepsAliveProjectsPerfection Author:Ayana Mathis
“I think that the project of being alive is to be alive. So there will always be twists and turns and steps forward and steps back, but that's just your life. There is no sort of place at which to arrive, and I think that the more one focuses on an end point, the harder it is to get there. It's like the horizon, sort of ever receding, ever receding, ever receding.” ThinkingEndsTurnsStepsAliveProjectsHarderHorizonTwistsSteps ForwardTwists And Turns Author:Ayana Mathis
“There is a forgotten black middle class in America - a group which is huge but underrepresented in the media and in art. It's difficult to talk about these things, because it forces one to talk in generalities, but that's my view. I do think the idea of a blanket class for black people is unfortunately still present.” PeopleThinkingArtDifficultBlackForgottenMiddle ClassBlack PeopleBlanket Author:Ayana Mathis
“I think a lot about race and the burdens of representation. There's an idea that because I'm writing a book set around the time of the Great Migration, and happen to be black, I'm trying to write a definitive account of the Great Migration, the so-called "black experience." That's not what I'm doing, and it can be frustrating.” ThinkingWritingTryingBookBlackBurdenRepresentationFrustratingWriting A Book Author:Ayana Mathis
“In America, and no doubt elsewhere, we have such a tendency toward the segregation of cultural products. This is a black book, this is a gay book, this is an Asian book. It can be counterproductive both to the literary enterprise and to people's reading, because it can set up barriers. Readers may think, "Oh, I'm a straight man from Atlanta and I'm white, so I won't enjoy that book because it's by a gay black woman in Brooklyn." They're encouraged to think that, in a way, because of the categorization in the media.” ThinkingMenBookReadingEnjoyBlackDoubtGayEnterpriseBarriersElsewhereBlack WomenSegregation Author:Ayana Mathis
“I like to say I had a very varied undergraduate education. I was an English major first, and then at the end of my college career I decided I was interested in urban planning. I became an urban studies major, with a minor in poetry. I don't think I knew what I was looking for in my early twenties, but I know I kept not finding it.” ThinkingStudyCollegePlanningUrbanUrban PlanningEnglish Major Author:Ayana Mathis
“A belief in God may not be fully within me anymore, but there's still a belief in belief. The high drama and power of the Church has stayed with me. As a child in church, I saw grown men at the altar crying out for God's mercy. And the idea of someone doing that has become a joke in the popular culture, but when you are there and you see it, you experience - for a moment - an incredibly raw, honest, strange insight into what it means to be a human being. Those experiences don't leave you. Whatever you think of them, they are powerful experiences.” ThinkingMenMeanChildrenMomentsCultureBeliefChurchPowerfulHonestCryStrangeDramaJokesMercyInsightPopular CultureBelief In God Author:Ayana Mathis
“I think of my success as a kind of fluke. How else could I possibly think of it? And although it's a banal thing to say, I wrote my book because I was writing my book. At first I didn't know I was writing it, and one of the amazing things that happened as I was putting sentences down on paper is that some of the things that are most sacred and important to me rose to the surface of the prose.” ThinkingWritingKindImportantBookRoseProse Author:Ayana Mathis
“You have to find a way of shutting the future out and focusing on the writing. One of the problems I'll have with writing my second book is getting back into a situation where I think about the words on the page rather than the publishing industry, or success, or any kind of readership I may now have. I'll have to do what writers do, which is focus on the story and nothing else.” ThinkingWritingKindBookProblemSituationFocusPublishing Author:Ayana Mathis