Feminism in my stories

When people ask me if I’m a feminist, I usually respond that if by feminist they mean a person who wants to see equal rights for all genders, then yes, I’m a feminist.

I think the word has carried a lot of negative weight, resulting in people being weary of calling themselves feminists. But to me, it echoes the struggle for equality, not the oppression of others.

That’s why it’s so important to me to have it in my work. It underlines the things I couldn’t find as a little girl scouting the fantasy shelves in the library. The stories I loved to read were about boys, white boys, and if there happened to be a girl between those pages, she wasn’t anything I could relate to. I definitely couldn’t find anything within the LGBTQ community in the fantasy genre as a kid.

I don't just like to write about strong women, but I also want them to be the majority of the cast in my stories. By doing so, I’m not trying to make the males a minority—there will still be an overrepresented mass of books with an all, or almost all-male cast—what I’m trying to do is even out the tide a little.

There are still too many books, movies, games, and series that overrepresent males to such an extent it’s become normalized. And when we normalize something, it becomes hard for us to see the issue after a while. By switching it up and creating art that acts as the opposite of what we still see happening even today, we can break down the stereotype—one book at a time.