Burden Quote by Colson Whitehead

As a writer, I was shaped by a desire to write for black people. That things were not being represented. That was my motivating…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

I feel like I'm put in a position where I have to engage with what people bring to my work, which is an expectation…

— Branden Jacobs-Jenkins

“Throughout my life as I’ve sought to become a published writer of speculative fiction, my strongest detractors and discouragers have been other African Americans.…

— N.K. Jemisin

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't…

— Toni Morrison

I'm one of the few Black writers, or African American writers, who managed to work my way through the system so that it has…

— James McBride

I don't think there is any such thing as a black writer or a white writer. Ultimately, there is someone whom one reads.

— Derek Walcott

At one time if you were a black writer you had to be one of the best writers in the world to be published.…

— Walter Mosley

The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself…

— Octavia Butler

There are places and spaces for black writers to write about race as a central thing. It's important. We're still dealing with the remnants…

— Kwame Alexander

“African-American writers with an independent vision are often consigned to obscurity. The white critics can only tolerate one black writer at a time, usually…

— Ishmael Reed

I'm a black writer from Mississippi. That's what I most consider myself.

— Kiese Laymon

I'm not against White writers writing about Blacks as long as they are as objective as say James McPherson writing about an Irish American…

— Ishmael Reed