She left home for college understanding herself to be a certain person, to a large degree because of the expectations that have been placed upon her—as a young woman of a certain caste (what used to be called the Black Bourgeoisie). In “Amarillo Boulevard,” I wanted to push against easy notions of what it means to be Black or white or brown, of what it means to be a woman or a man, as a way to explore just how porous and artificial—and, ultimately, limiting—those walls truly are. Having already worked for more than a decade on the book, I was prepared to abandon Cecile as a point-of-view character and just feature the two male P.O.V.s, with Cecile as a sort of protean character whom the reader comes to understand by how these two men see her.
Author: Cressida Leyshon
Published at: 2025-09-28 10:00:00
Still want to read the full version? Full article
