I don't really understand why so many fantasy writers choose to focus on worlds that just seem strangely denuded. But to them, I guess it doesn't seem strange. And I guess that's their privilege. It isn't mine.
Interpretation
The quote questions the lack of diversity in fantasy worlds and reflects on the privilege of creators in expressing their realities.
N. K. Jemisin expresses a critical viewpoint on the tendency of many fantasy writers to create worlds that lack richness and diversity. She indicates that while this may not seem strange to those writers, it is a perspective that is not shared by everyone, particularly those who come from marginalized backgrounds, highlighting the privilege of choice in representation within storytelling.
In practice
In a panel on diversity in literature, this quote can be used to provoke discussion about representation in fantasy.
Magic is the mysteries into which not everyone is so lucky, or unlucky, as to be initiated. It can be affected by belief, the whims of the unseen, harsh language. And it is not. Supposed. To make. Sense. In fact, I think it's coolest when it doesn't.
I write what feels real. I write things that are informed both by my own experience and by actual history.
Reactionary movements can't sustain themselves unless they find something new to catch and burn on.
There's a thriving field of self-published stuff in, particularly, black fiction. I don't know that other groups of people of color have that same recourse.
Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.
I've always believed that as an artist, as a writer, you need a lot of contact with other people to make your art good.
To make music means to express human intelligence by sonic means. This is intelligence in its broadest sense, which includes not only the peregrinations of pure logic but also the "logic" of emotions and intuition. My musical techniques, although often rigorous in their internal structure, leave many openings through which the most complex and mysterious factors of the intelligence may penetrate.
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.
No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It's the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.
There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.
The best poems take long journeys. I like poetry best that journeys--while remaining in the human scale--to the other world, which may be a place as easily overlooked as a bee's wing
You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.
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