Sarah M. Broom on Seeking Out Intellectual Boundlessness

In her “By the Book” interview with the New York Times, author Sarah M. Broom discusses the importance of allowing Black writers to write with a sense of boundlessness. “I wish (and I know this was not the question, exactly) for the day when Black writers — especially women — are free to write whatever in the world they want,” Broom says. “And are fairly paid for the thing they wrote. Am thinking so much these days of Toni Morrison’s apt quotation: ‘The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.’ I am looking for intellectual boundlessness in my own work.”