Since it’s Pride Month and Juneteenth season and three months until Ruby Finley comes out, I thought I’d post about an aspect of the book that’s not obvious from the jacket copy but is very important to me, a Black Queer person.
When I first decided to write this book I had specific goals about representation and inclusion. I wanted my protagonist to be Black, to live in a Black community that is functional, safe, and caring, and for that community to have LGBTQ+ people in it as a matter of course. I did this by including parents who are gay and lesbian, and at no point is this ever brought up as a problem or abnormal.