What is it like to break with convention? To go against expectations? To slip out of the mainstream? In my 20s what I wanted most was to write. What I needed most was time. So I took a nightshift job summarizing crime articles. Though I relished escape from the nine-to-five drudge, the inverted perspective of being nocturnal, and the nonconformist people I met, my body clock never adjusted.
Constantly sleep deprived, my writing stalled. Years on, I used this setting for my debut novel, Nightshift. She meets Sabine and recognizes in her the person she wants to be.
Writing the book, I was interested how far from societal expectations someone will go to explore who they are. If you let go of vapid ideas like that, of that kind of preciousness, you could explore so much else. If you swept your precious self out of the way a bit.
Unsurprisingly, as a reader, I am drawn to outsiders who make choices that swim against the tide of dominant narratives. Here are a few of my favorites, new and old, in which I find inspiration, comfort and hope:. A Black British woman has a high-powered finance job. But she is exhausted by the obligation to ascend, and the impossibility of escaping white narratives. Outwardly, she appears to fit in and achieve worldly success, while inwardly she finds relief in contemplating a choice that may cost her life.
These words, symbols arranged on the page itself a pure, unblemished vehicle for objective elucidation of thought , these basic units of civilization β how could they harbour ill intent? We follow his love affair with R. The book is infused with sexual desire, which is explicitly, viscerally, and tenderly described. One day Damaris brings home a puppy that she gives the name intended for her daughter.
