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Twitterview: Brandy Colbert (POINTE)

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Yesterday, we had a review of Brandy Colbert’s knockout debut Pointe. Today, we have a Twitterview with her, asking the tough questions about Pointe, her writing process, as well as the books and music that inspire her. This is our first Twitterview of the new year, and it’s a good one.


In addition, we’re giving away two finished copies of Pointe. Form is at the bottom of the interview, and the contest is open to US and Canadian residents only.


I’m so excited to share this conversation, so without further ado, here’s Brandy.

Pitch Pointe in 140 characters.

A gifted dancer’s life unravels when her childhood best friend returns after four years in captivity—and she has ties to the abduction.
What inspired Pointe?

A lifelong love of dance and an obsession with long-term kidnapping stories, especially the one portrayed in I Know My First Name Is Steven.

How would you describe Theo, your main character?

Determined. Foolhardy. Passionate. Competitive. 


Theo is a POC in a very white world (in setting and sport). Talk about that.

Theo is very aware that she sticks out in her world, but she refuses to let her race define her, in both her life and desired profession.

Do you have more to say about that?  

I do! POINTE is the third book I’ve written about a teenage black girl, but it’s the first in which her race was not the focal point or even a subplot of the story. As someone who grew up black in a predominantly white town in southwest Missouri, I wanted to write a character who dealt with some of the day-to-day issues and obstacles I’d experienced without that being the point of the book. I was very involved in academics and extracurricular activities as a child and teen, and although it was a little tough almost always being the only black person in the room, or being the first black person to, for instance, join my high school’s dance team, I think those years were instrumental in shaping the person I am today. Overall, I had a great time in high school and tried to make the best of it. If people were going to notice me for being different anyway, I wanted them to especially notice me for my accomplishments. I believe Theo has a similar attitude.

There’s romance in this book but it’s the friendships that stand out to me. Tell me about Theo and Ruthie’s friendship.

They’re lifelong friends from ballet and are competitive, but also have a mutual respect and trust that extends to life beyond the studio.

And how about Theo and Donovan’s friendship?

Complicated. They’re essentially strangers now, but also bonded for life, because and in spite of what happened when they were thirteen.

Was there a particular scene in the book you most enjoyed writing?

Theo + Hosea in the gazebo. They don’t really know each other and are both very  private, but they open up to talk honestly about their art.



What about a scene that gave you the most trouble writing? 

Scenes at the abandoned park and convenience store. Dance scenes can be tough; you want to show authority + beauty without getting jargon-y.

Who is your ideal reader for Pointe? 

Truly, everyone. But I love the idea of young black girls who haven’t seen themselves represented this way in YA fiction connecting to it.

Is there anything you want readers to walk away with? 

Hmm. I’d be happy knowing people think about the story at all after they finish the book.

Pointe is your debut novel. What’s been the most exciting part of your debut year so far?

That people who aren’t related to me care about this little idea that lived in my head and on my computer for years. It’s so very surreal.

What’s been the most surprising part of your debut year? 

Emotions, everywhere! About everything! Also, time management is pretty much nonexistent these days.

If you had to give your book a “____ meets _____” pitch, what two (or three! or four!) books/films/shows would Pointe be a meeting of?

My editor has described it as “Black Swan” meets “Speak.” I’m terrible at mash-ups and it’s super flattering, so I’ll go with that.

Outside of writing, what do you do with your free time? 

I joke about being a hermit and it’s maybe 40% true. I read a lot. Obsess over TV. Hang with friends who trick me into things like hiking.


Who or what do you write for?

Myself, mostly. Writing is very therapeutic for me, and my work is at its best when I write the type of story I would love to read.

What was your most influential read as a teenager?

How Do You Lose Those Ninth-Grade Blues? It was already dated when I first read it, but DeClements’ books really speak to me. 
Who are your top three writing influences?

ZZ Packer, Courtney Summers, Barthe DeClements
Who do you believe is breaking ground in YA right now?

Stephanie Kuehn, Corey Ann Haydu, Carrie Mesrobian, Blythe Woolston, Steve Brezenoff

Can you share three of your all-time, would-recommend-to-anyone favorite books?

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Hold Still by Nina LaCour
What’s the best writing advice you ever received?

Be an honest writer. I found my voice once I stopped worrying what people would think of me for writing dark books about complicated topics.

What’s your best writing advice to give?

If people say there’s no room on the shelves for the books you write, keep at it until someone makes room for you. Don’t give up.

What is your writing routine?

I am completely without routine, but I’ve always done my best writing late at night, and when I have large chunks of time to devote to it.

What gets you jazzed to write?

I’m inspired by good writing and storytelling, so: discovering new books/TV/film, my critique partners’ work, rereading old favorites.

Do you have a writing soundtrack? Care to share a bit?

I love music, but don’t write to it! In the rare instance I do, I tend to go with groups like Zero 7, Daft Punk, and Thievery Corporation.

What’s next for you?

More gritty YA contemp about black girls. I’m working on two projects that I’m unbelievably excited about, but they’re under wraps for now.

Favorite ice cream?

Only the tough questions! Tie between Ben & Jerry’s AmeriCone Dream, Häagen-Dazs Dulche de Leche, and Trader Joe’s Golden Caramel Swirl.

Would you like the chance to win Pointe? We’re giving away two finished copies. Fill out the form below. We’ll pull winners at the end of the month.

Guest Post: Ashley Hope Perez on Why Diversity Matters in Contemporary YA Fiction

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Diversity in Contemporary YA Fiction by Ashley Hope Perez
I came to care about diversity in YA first as a reader. As a high-school English teacher, I shared a quest with my students in Houston, a quest to find those books that would speak to them and their varied experiences.


We had plenty of successes, but there were a number of students for whom it seemed that the gateway book—that critical read that would persuade them of all that words can do—was missing. “I want a book that shows how my life really is,” I heard over and over. “Not just somebody brown, but somebody real,” one student insisted. And, “please, I can’t stand it when they make it seem like if you just get accepted to college you’ve got it made.” That last bit came from one of my top-performing seniors, an impressive scholar by all accounts but also a young woman who had few illusions about the conflicting demands she would be facing in the coming years.


It wasn’t long before my students—aware of my aspirations to “one day” write a novel—began to recommend (okay, insist, pester, badger) that I write the book that they were looking for. It turned out to be the greatest of many gifts they gave me, and my students were both my inspiration and the first readers for What Can’t Wait.

Often I hear from readers of What Can’t Wait and The Knife and the Butterfly with questions along the lines of, “How did you know it was like this for me?” Readers of What Can’t Wait sometimes assume that I’m telling my own story (I’m not, except in that something of every author lodges in her books), but since The Knife and the Butterfly deals with gang culture and is narrated from a Salvadoran-American teenage male’s perspective, the question is all the more frequent in that context. How does a nerdy, twenty-something mother make the leap into that world?

In truth, the answer is the same for both cases: I listened.

For What Can’t Wait, I listened to my students as they talked through the latest crisis, listened to their gossip in the hallways during passing period, cherished the stories and notes they shared to help me develop the story. For The Knife and the Butterfly, I heard the voice of a lost boy while reading in the papers about a gang fight and its aftermath, and I knew I had to learn how to become the writer who could tell his story. In the process of growing into that role, I listened to hours of interviews with MS-13 members, especially focusing on the aspects of the experiences described that challenged my preconceptions. I did other research, too, but it mattered especially to voice that experience as it was lived by real youths.

The best diverse reads grow out of a sense of urgency and a sense of particularity. For me, urgency often comes from a feeling that my audience—often “at-risk” or otherwise marginalized teens—needs the story I’m telling. Making particularity a priority argues against giving a character a particular background, social status, or sexual orientation because one feels—in some abstract way—that one “should” do it. Rather, we do best when those characteristics are part of a compelling character whose experience of the world is based in who they are—or who they are becoming—but is not defined by or limited by any one characteristic.

The enemy of particularity is, in my opinion, tokenism, where a character’s background is either basically arbitrary or is the only reason they are included. I read a YA novel recently that had two characters of color (out of four focal characters), and both plugged neatly into a stereotype: the cool Indian-American with emotional commitments to extended family on the one hand and the financially strapped Latino working as a busboy on the other. The problem wasn’t so much that these details were part of the character profile; it was that they were defining features. Most of the characters’ actions—and much of their story—found motivation in these relatively superficial factors.

That’s not to say that we should immediately veto all novels that seem to draw on stereotypes. A crucial strategy in some narratives is to engage a stereotype up to a point so as to gradually dismantle it through the course of the narrative. This is what I try to do, for example, with the trope of the Hispanic family as a barrier to individual success in What Can’t Wait. While the protagonist struggles with her family’s ever-increasing expectations, in the end several members of her family rally around her to help her overcome her own personal crisis. Similarly, while I have a Latino dropout and gang member narrate The Knife and the Butterfly, his misogynist views and macho bravado gradually peel away as he comes closer and closer to total desperation.

When I have the chance to talk with librarians or teachers about book selection, I often beg them first to make sure their collection goes well beyond the default “diversity” titles. By the time my (mostly Latino) students reached my senior English class, most of them had read The House on Mango Street—in part or in whole—a half dozen times. While the absence of a broad selection of diverse YA titles can reinforce students’ feelings of exclusion and general disengagement from the world of books, offering students (whatever their background) a sense of the range of YA can generate a sense of excitement.

Here are the questions that I ask myself when evaluating a YA novel that includes a non-mainstream character. Is the book of comparable literary quality to other books in its genre/category? Will the style/voice/pacing/themes of the novel appeal to some portion of my target group? What role does the character’s background play in the story? If the plot involves issues of identity, does it complicate those issues somehow? Does the character act and make choices, however narrow the margin of possibility may be for him or her? Does the story incorporate recognizable stereotypes? If so, are these complicated or challenged somehow? What new readers might I reach with this book? For whom would this be a “gateway drug” read?

There’s no formula for what makes a good diverse read, but in setting priorities, it’s helpful to think through these questions. They can help us to step out of our own preferences and dig into the needs and appetites of the readers we want to serve.
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Ashley Hope Pérez is the author of two YA novels, The Knife and the Butterfly and What Can’t Wait. What Can’t Wait was inspired by her high-school students in Houston and was named to the YALSA 2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults list. Her latest novel, The Knife and the Butterfly, explores the lives of two teens connected by their struggles—and by an act of violence. Kirkus Reviews called it “an unflinching portrait with an ending that begs for another reading.” You can find Ashley online at www.ashleyperez.com, on Twitter (@ashleyhopeperez), and on Facebook and Goodreads.