Books And a Movie Clip That Inspired Conquer.
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler:
I read this book for a college class I took and the way it challenged me to think deeper about how evil slavery was in this country had inspired me to think deeply about the issues I wanted to tackle in my book. Octavia E. Butler used science-fiction as a tool to get readers to widen their view of how slavery impacted the USA’s society. It influenced the way I researched and the way in which I viewed complicated and nuanced issues.
The Wings of Ebony Duology by J.elle:
(Read while I was writing Conquer)
Rue (the FMC) and I have so much in common. I wish I had this book when I was in high school. The fact that she was trying to be strong for the whole of the first book and finally broke down towards the end was so cathartic for me. It made me realize that a lot of people talk about Angry or 'emotional' Black girls/women without seeing all the buildup that took her there. This heavily inspired my FMC X (Xandria) but it’s a little more twisted. (You'll see when I publish it)
Now the second book, Ashes of Gold we see the perfectionist Black girl which inspired my OC Venus. Rue spends a lot of this book thinking that she's not good enough to be a leader.... Yes, I cried again because same. Alot of Black girls and Black women feel the need to be extraordinary because we start 10 feet underground before we even get to the field to play the game. So, some of us don’t allow ourselves to be our imperfect selves and we don’t allow ourselves to be ok with growing like any other person. Which is another topic we conquer 😉in Conquer.
The Legend Series by Marie Lu:
I read this before I started writing Conquer and the main thing, I remember about this series is what makes YA dystopian story a YA dystopian story. These kids tore up the system. The series also starts off with this underdog type of character and I love characters like that. It somewhat feeds some pride to me when I see them tear oppressive systems apart after being victim of it. I enjoy the idea of making something of nothing and then using that something to flip tables. Especially when the people who run that system don’t expect you to do so. I enjoyed this series at the time I read it and it came into memory as I was writing.
That specific scene in Spider-man:
I feel like as of late we tend to forsake the power of community. I wanted to bring that back with Conquer because there's so much heart, compassion and POWER in a loyal and strong community. Not too often do you see community play a big role in the solution when it comes to dystopian stories but let’s be honest community is foundational to productivity in many aspects. Especially if you're Black. Black community is important to our success and it’s so empowering, safe and beautiful when we nurture it. I know it gets ugly and messy and difficult; I didn’t write it that way in this series. I wrote it with nuances and ugly truths. I wrote pessimistically and optimistically about leaning on other folk. However, we won’t forget the positivity either. It starts off small in book one and snowballs into book three.
I hope this helped y’all get a better idea of what this whole thing is about! If you haven’t already sign up for a newsletter for more updates on Conquer!