Teen Like Black

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By Kobo • July 04, 2021Author Interviews
Throughout the linked stories of Blackout, six (6!!!) of the most beloved and talented YA authors explore love, friendship, and a spectrum of teenage feelings that come out when a heatwave knocks New York City’s power offline.
We asked authors Nicola Yoon, Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, and Ashley Woodfolk about the collaboration.

Kobo: Nicola, your books are so much about the rush of youthful romance... Do you catch yourself wondering where these beautiful young people went on to? Or are you driven as a writer to tell the next story of two people falling in love?

Nicola Yoon: By the time I’m finished writing a book, I’ve spent so much time thinking about my characters and their wants and needs that I know what happens to them in the future and so I don’t tend to wonder about them too much.
Where did the idea for the 6-way collab of Blackout come from?
Dhonielle Clayton: During the pandemic, we were all struggling so much with all that was happening across the globe and I felt like we needed love to get us through the devastation, loss, and new reality. I thought about how we could collaborate to make something beautiful for Black teens who were struggling. We wanted to celebrate Black love by showing it in many different ways, and thus this beautiful project was born.
Tiffany, when we last checked in you’d been meaning to read The Four Agreements so you could take things less personally. While we would never be so rude as to check up on your reading, we did want to know, where in your writer’s mind do you put the perspectives of your collaborators in a project like Blackout so you’re able to stay true to your art and do your best work?

Tiffany D. Jackson: Wow! Drag me. LOL! I actually haven’t finished reading The Four Agreements, it still sits on my nightstand next to my journal I don’t write in nearly enough. But I will say that we really embodied the first agreement “Be Impeccable With Your Word.” We all had the same goal in mind, made a pact and stuck with it: write a love story full of joy for black teens. I’ve worked on group projects most of my life (hello Film/TV world!) but I never experienced such flawless synergy like ours. It’s magic!
Nic, did writing Blackout have anything in common with writing Shuri, your Black Panther novel? In projects like these do you write with a sense of the boundaries of the story you’re telling in a world where others are also crafting stories and characters? And is that worrying, exciting – a bit of both?

Nic Stone: Honestly, I’m pretty much always telling stories in spaces that are shared by other storytellers because most of what I write is set in the real world. Shuri, of course, is the exception re: reality, but I approach it the same way I do my contemporary stories: with what’s possible in mind. Even in settings with rules I’M not writing, the only limitations come from my own imagination. It will always by my goal to push existing “boundaries” as far as I can stretch them.
Angie, your novels The Hate U Give, Concrete Rose, and On the Come Up are all steeped in different kinds of love: mostly love of community and different kinds of love of family. Blackout is about young romantic love – does that feel like taking on a challenge in a new style, or a relief to do something different?

Angie Thomas: It was a challenge, but in a good way. I enjoyed writing Kayla’s story and exploring the messiness that can be a love triangle (or spoiler alert: a love square). Writing about relationships of any kind means writing about communication and the various ways we interact with one another. In my story, Kayla has feelings for two different boys who communicate with her in two very different ways. She not only has to figure out which love language is her love language, but who is she in the midst of all of this. That’s a theme I think my readers are used to seeing in my stories regardless. I was also able to weave in Kayla’s family dynamics despite the fact she’s stuck on a tour bus in the middle of New York.
Ashley, so much of your writing is about the complex feelings bound up in friendship, which feels like under-explored emotional territory in all kinds of literature, where romantic love is so often placed at the center of stories. Are you able to say what it is about friendship that makes you want to write about it in so many different ways?
Ashley Woodfolk: I think I’m someone who values friendship over almost everything. And for a very long time I was terrified of losing friends, because I put so much value and love into the friendships I had. Losing a friend for me was, for a long time, akin to losing a limb. So I think I keep writing about it because I’m trying to puzzle out its secrets--trying to find the secret recipe for the thing we all want and that society tells us we should have--that one BFF: Best Friend Forever.

Through my writing I think I have uncovered a secret, but not the one I expected. There is no secret recipe to having a best friend, or to keeping any friend. And it’s okay if friends don’t last forever. Most friends won’t. That doesn’t change how lovely and fulfilling friendship can be.

I think I’ll keep writing about it though. There is so much to discover about the ways we choose and try and love each other. ◼
A summer heatwave blankets New York City in darkness. But as the city is thrown into confusion, a different kind of electricity sparks…
And maybe the beginning of something new.
When the lights go out, people reveal hidden truths. Love blossoms, friendship transforms, and new possibilities take flight.

Bestselling YA novelist Tiffany D. Jackson told us which spooky books she's reading now, and how she's going to learn to not take criticism personally.
YA author Tanya Boteju told us what she's been reading and how she came to see roller derby as a place for healing in her new book, Bruised.
We've put together 15 eBooks and audiobooks that celebrate Black joy and are sure to entertain, inspire, and energize every kind of reader.
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What It Feels Like to Be a Black Man in America Right Now
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Teen Vogue's social media director speaks on the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
I used to believe the phrase “it could happen to you” was one of the most melodramatic things in the world. Such a cliché, honestly: a sentiment that, sure, was statistically correct but really no more meaningful for me than for anyone else. Bad things happen...it’s the nature of the world. All you have to do is be a good, kind person and nature and karma would take care of the rest. It could happen to someone, sure. But not me.
But 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed wearing a hoodie after purchasing a pack of Skittles. Eighteen-year-old Michael Brown was killed while running for his life. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was killed after carrying a toy gun in a park. Seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones was sleeping on the couch when police raided her family’s home and a cop fired his gun. Eric Garner was killed while shouting that he couldn’t breathe. Rekia Boyd was completely unarmed when she was killed. And in the last 48 hours, news broke that both Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are two more black victims shot and killed by police officers. And this is just a sliver of the hundreds of police brutality victims, an disproportionate amount of whom are black men and women.
The truth is, it couldn’t happen to you. Unless you happen to be a black person in America, this is not happening to you. But it is happening to people like me, to black men just trying to make a living, to black women who just want to be magic, to boys and girls who aren’t even old enough to understand the generations of hatred and injustice that have claimed their lives. And I live in a constant, nagging fear that my name will be next, that nothing but my skin color and its history in America will cost me my life.
After I am killed, I will then be crucified on TV screens and laptops and iPhones all over the world. People on Facebook will presume I must have done something to antagonize the officer, because surely the video that shows me being defenselessly gunned down "isn't the whole story." I will be rendered unable to defend myself as the media will evade the hundreds of Instagram photos and Facebook pictures where I am smiling or happy and find the one where I happen to be grimacing, or look "scary." They will use that photo for wordless proof as to why I should be dead, because this is what people who deserve to die look like.
What you should know is that there are black teenagers growing into black adults all over the country who are seeing themselves slaughtered on live television. They are your friends, your classmates, and your coworkers. They are black boys and black girls who just want to be considered equal, who want to live with the same opportunities and hope for the future that you do. And unless you are black yourself, there is no proper way for you to understand what it is like to see yourself murdered over and over again — at the supermarket, at the park, on your way to see a loved one. And each death delivers a message, an exploding truth: this is how America sees you. We don't chant #BlackLivesMatter because we think they matter any more than yours does. We need to scream "BLACK LIVES MATTER" until our throats bleed because we are consistently reminded again and again and again that they do not.
As a black man in America, I am kept awake by the absolute helplessness of being in my shoes, the fear and anger and confusion that is drowned out by the truth that my life and how people perceive me is ultimately out of my hands. No matter how many posts I write or how many stories I tweet — there is no pairing of words or public display that will ever get you to understand what it’s like to walk and breathe and live in constant fear of being yourself. That when I say I am black and proud, and when I say my life matters, someone will be there every time to deny it. To judge it and mock it. And to take it from me.
The young person’s guide to conquering (and saving) the world. Teen Vogue covers the latest in celebrity news, politics, fashion, beauty, wellness, lifestyle, and entertainment.
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