Quote

I couldn't write about love without writing about hate - specifically, how the experience of hatred embeds itself in the body and prevents love from entering or leaving.

Vivek Shraya

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Vivek Shraya
Hate
Experience
Write
Prevents
Body
Specifically
Without
Entering
Writing
Leaving
Love
Hatred
Couldn

More quotes by Vivek Shraya

Image
I recently did a reading at an elementary school in Ottawa, and one of the children asked me if I was a girl. I said yes. Another child commented that I had a deep voice. I responded: Can girls have deep voices? There was a pause and then the group responded, Yes!
Vivek Shraya
Image
I didn't want to give the white reader an opportunity to think of racism as imaginary - a sentiment that is already a central barrier in addressing the problem.
Vivek Shraya
Image
In poetry, I didn't have to provide resolution. I could ask hard questions without feeling responsible for the answers.
Vivek Shraya
Image
Writing about racism requires a directness that writing a love story does not.
Vivek Shraya
Image
I think white artists have a responsibility to be not only naming white supremacy, but to be using their power and privilege to support artists of color.
Vivek Shraya
Image
I have dedicated a significant portion of my time and artistry to making art that addresses various forms of oppression, including white supremacy, misogyny, and biphobia.
Vivek Shraya
Image
I don't yet know what style will be required for my next novel, but my sense is that each book will involve a new relationship to language.
Vivek Shraya
Image
Children are receptive to talking about gender creativity, confirming the importance of the book as a means to instigate this dialogue at an early age.
Vivek Shraya
Image
I would love to see more dialogue around the responsibilities of art consumers - how can audiences better financially support artists we love, artists who are doing the work, so that artists have a more solid foundation upon which to make art?
Vivek Shraya
Image
Now is not the time for Canadians to be sanctimonious. It is time for us to be prudent and active.
Vivek Shraya
Image
If anything, I have witnessed the ways my art travels, or is rendered more accessible, when sanctioned by or connected to white artists.
Vivek Shraya
Image
As a person of color, I know race can't be stripped from admiration or preference.
Vivek Shraya
Image
As a brown artist, I have mixed feelings about my relationship to art and my responsibilities post-Trump.
Vivek Shraya
Image
Of course, I can't separate my queerness from my brownness - if anything, my queerness amplifies my brownness, and vice versa - but I spent so much of my early twenties trying to erase my differences, often without awareness of what I was doing.
Vivek Shraya
Image
I especially worry about the ways Canadians can be glib about our supposed difference from the US in our acceptance of diversity.
Vivek Shraya
Image
I am always hesitant to call myself an activist, mostly out of respect for the activists who are using their bodies and voices to protest or activists online who are constantly engaging and educating others.
Vivek Shraya
Image
I am more likely to get paid for my art if it's presented alongside a white artist, so the questions around value and agency arise: What choices should I make, or do I have to make, if I want to be compensated for my work? Why isn't my art valued on its own?
Vivek Shraya
Image
It's exciting to consider how art, in its ability to reveal, can be ahead of the artist.
Vivek Shraya
Image
My interest in language is steadfast, but I think each project and its accompanying intentions dictate how language must be used.
Vivek Shraya
Image
I used singing as a safety measure. I would pay attention to what songs the popular girls liked, learn those songs from the radio or library cassettes, and then accidentally sing or hum these songs in class. This would impress the girls, who would then defend me from the boys.
Vivek Shraya