Since becoming aware of the need to be inclusive, I've tried to make my stories broader and more representative of our world.
Ann Aguirre
I remember when I was a kid, I could never find anything positive about chubby girls. If a girl was pudgy in books, she wasn't okay. She couldn't be happy or make friends unless she lost weight.
I immerse myself in everything I write; I feel what my characters do. I suffer with them. I cry as I type, sometimes to the point that I can't see the screen.
In 2007, I sold my first book, 'Grimspace.' It says it's SF on the spine. I believe it to be SF, though it's certainly written differently. I write in first person, present tense, and the protagonist is a woman with a woman's thoughts, feelings, and sexual desires.
I've held my silence when I probably shouldn't have. But I was in the minority, a woman writing SF, and I was afraid of career backlash. I was afraid of being excluded or losing opportunities if I didn't play nice.
Too often, women are portrayed in two ways: as prizes to be won by men or as damsels in distress.
I've tried to be inclusive in my '2B' series. Over the course of three books, I wrote African-American characters, a paraplegic character, gay and lesbian characters, a bisexual, Jewish heroine, a multiracial hero, Korean and Chinese-American characters, and a multiracial supporting character.
People are capable of incredible gallantry and terrible cruelty in situations of extreme duress. I tried to showcase that range in 'Enclave.'
People need to believe they can make a difference - that one person standing strong can turn the tide.
My process seems to be unusual in the sense that I don't create worlds before characters. With me, character is king.
The people I write are real to me, and basically, they tell me about their environments on a need-to-know basis.
My life experiences are different than the average person because I've spent the last 10 years living in Mexico. I generally don't know what's going on in America, and when I do visit for work, I'm often interrogated about my life choices by random strangers.
I am a woman. I write SF. And it's not acceptable to treat me as anything less than an equal. I won't stand for it.
I had a respected SF writer call me 'girlie' and demand that I get him a coffee, before the panel we were on together.
