It's a very weird cultural perception that if you're fat you're dumb, that you're lazy or a loser. Clearly, those are the preconditions for fatness. You're a failure, because only a lazy person, only a dumb person, would allow themselves to get into this situation. It's appalling that this is the mindset. People generally treat fat people like we don't know anything about anything. It's incredibly demeaning. And incredibly frustrating.

I never imagined that I would be the kind of person who is recognized when I am out and about just living my life.

It is deeply unfair to task writers of color with unique responsibilities that we don't assign to all writers.

I'm fat positive, in that I don't see fat as a bad thing. But what I do see as a bad thing is how I'm treated. I can have the most positive outlook in the world, but that is not going to change how hecklers and people walking down the street are yelling at me.

I look at my older writing to see where my weaknesses are and then I try to address those weaknesses and make new mistakes.

Whiteness is not the default in my fiction.

Knowing that a story needs to be told is a great motivator, even if telling a given story comes at a price. Writing Hunger has been the most difficult writing of my life, and it's the rawest and perhaps most necessary. We'll see how people take it. I always strive to write beyond personal catharsis because though I write first and foremost for myself, I do recognize that I need to look outward as much if not more than I look inward, so the reader has something with which they can engage.