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Here's the thing about writing as a "diverse" author (ugh), you're docked points by *everyone* wrt to whether your voice is "diverse-enough" by some random scale the reader/reviewer applies and implies is universal, but stop reading from that perspective bc it is damaging as hell
Stop judging the "authenticity" of a narrative against one specific experience — a book isn't bad because it's not the exact narrative a reader wants from it, it might just not be a book for that reader.
(Obvi this is not about harmful books, this is about the fact that myriad diasporic stories can co-exist)
We are so ready to tear "own voices" books down because they're not doing enough, or they're not the right stories, or whatever, but that's not what the descriptor is for, it's to amplify another *piece* of representation, bc one narrative should never represent the whole
Ppl shouldn't be afraid to tell their own stories bc they won't pass some fake identity purity test of what their story SHOULD be. Relationships to identities & communities & cultures & religions & bodies etc are complicated & messy. Text should be allowed to reflect that.
