Then when I’d come across a breathtaking short story by a young Senegalese girl about Mami Wata, an editor had sucked some air between her lips and said that though she ‘enjoyed’ my ‘initiative’, and that I should ‘keep it up’ (with a tight-lipped smile that one might give to a small child holding up a picture of a wonky triangle they’d drawn), she said she found fairy tales too archaic and, plus, ‘Race-bent Little Mermaid is kind of overdone. Don’t you think?’
Oof.
