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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

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Vivek Shraya
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More quotes by Vivek Shraya

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I feel like I have had to catch up to the art I've made, and learn from the protagonists I have written, especially in relation to gender.
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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.
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I tend to focus less on genre as a starting point and more on idea or intention and let the idea dictate genre.
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As a person of color, I know race can't be stripped from admiration or preference.
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When I wouldn't leave home without my blue contacts or when I was bleaching my hair, I didn't have the language to articulate that I was trying to assimilate to whiteness. If anything, I was trying to look normal.
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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.
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I continue to explore poetry.
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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.
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My art career often feels less like an art career and more like a career in educating, usually by using my body.
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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.
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I especially worry about the ways Canadians can be glib about our supposed difference from the US in our acceptance of diversity.
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I always work with text orally in the writing process, saying passages aloud to measure flow.
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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!
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Now is not the time for Canadians to be sanctimonious. It is time for us to be prudent and active.
Vivek Shraya
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My intention was never to write a trans novel - which is perhaps an effective strategy for writing a trans novel.
Vivek Shraya
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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
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In poetry, I didn't have to provide resolution. I could ask hard questions without feeling responsible for the answers.
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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?
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As much as I believe in the capacity for art to create change, and as much as being an artist is physically and emotionally challenging, there is ultimately something a bit comfortable about making art in the comfort of your own home.
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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.
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