Publisher’s Preview | Five Questions for Gwendolyn Wallace

Interview by Roger Sutton

In The Light She Feels Inside, Gwendolyn Wallace and illustrator Olivia Duchess portray the power of books (and librarians!) to boost a young girl’s sense of self-worth.

1. What writer can you rely upon to make you glow?

Jamaica Kincaid. Every time she writes something new, I drop everything to read it. She writes about Black girlhood and about nature with a tender and incisive love. I have not yet encountered an author who can write the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood with more deftness and honesty than she can.

2. Were you Maya? Are you still?

I am absolutely still Maya! Sometimes I am Maya in the middle of the book, filled with pessimism about the future of the world. However, I spend more and more time in the same emotional space as Maya at the end of the book: feeling held by revolutionary Black women past and present, love for the many communities I am a part of, and confidence in our collective capacity to change this world for the better.

To read the rest of the interview, visit hbook.com