When the Apricots Bloom

by Gina Wilkinson

I also want to acknowledge the important discussion around our own voices. The publishing industry has marginalized authors outside of the white, Western mainstream for far too long. This needs to change. In this polarized era, we need more diverse books, written by diverse authors, in settings and situations that reflect the deep richness of our world. At the same time, like PEN America, I don’t believe in setting “rigid rules” about who has the right to tell which stories, or that an author should be confined to creating only characters with a similar background or genetic code. I’ve spent more than twenty years living outside of my home country, in Iraq, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Brazil, and the United States and Canada. I’ve lived in tiny rural communities and heaving metropolises. Throughout, I’ve found that while we might pray in a certain way, cover our hair or not, bake our bread flat or leavened, at heart we want the same things—safety,