Another insightful post by fellow writer and Matera devotee, Kimberly Sullivan. Kimberly’s examination of people’s opinions about what women should write reminds me of something that happened when I was still working on my MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University. So often I was told that, as a black woman, I should be writing about “black issues” or that my characters didn’t feel “black enough”–whatever that means. I usually scoffed at this notion that I was only supposed to write about “serious” or “black” issues. My reply was generally: “I write what I want to write.” And I think the same is true for all writers. We write the stories within us. We write what we want to write and no one else should think they can demand that we write anything else. 🙂 Thanks for another great post, Kimberly! Happy Thanksgiving!