Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley Podcast Por Vanessa Riley arte de portada

Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley

Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley

De: Vanessa Riley
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Join bestselling author Vanessa Riley as she delves into untold histories, reflects on current events through a historical lens, shares behind-the-scenes writing insights, and offers exclusive updates on her groundbreaking novels.

vanessariley.substack.comVanessa Riley Ciencias Sociales
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  • Color Me Problematic

    Color Me Problematic
    Jul 15 2025
    Call me crazy.But I thought we were past some things.You know — basic rights stuff, like healthcare for all, voting rights without chaos. The idea that every American deserves life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without governmental interference.Apparently, that’s so 2008.This week in the year 2025, two things got under my skin in the best and worst ways. First, my guilty pleasure: Love Island. I didn’t watch the show live, but caught up and got hooked by you’re your TikTok and Twitter recaps. I got swept up like half the internet by the stunning couple, Nic and Olandria. Interracial, magnetic, and misunderstood — especially Olandria, a gorgeous dark-skinned woman whose elegance and composure were somehow seen as… too much.Let’s be clear. She wasn’t mean. She wasn’t cold. She was poised. Tender but guarded. Stylish but composed, and one of the best-dressed contestants this season. Yet on these platform were hot-takes, threads flooded with critiques. She was too reserved. Not fun enough. Not "approachable." Comparing and contrasting, it became clear that her darker skin shaped how some of the audience expected her to behave or willfully misinterpreted how she acted.Yes in 2025, dark skin can still means aggressive. Hood. Strong and never soft. Olandia isn’t supposed to be the dream girl.Lighter-skinned contestants, equally quiet or equally assertive, weren’t held to the same standard. Colorism still has reach.Colorism is not new. Slavery institutionalized a caste system where skin tone dictated labor, survival, and status. Lighter-skinned people, whether Indigenous, biracial, or descended from colonizers, were often placed in “preferable” conditions. This twisted logic follows us through Reconstruction, through Jim Crow, through beauty pageants, and now reality TV.When I was researching Island Queen and came across the remarkable life of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a formerly enslaved woman who owned businesses across the West Indies and had a documented affair with a prince of England, I assumed she must’ve been biracial and fair-skinned — it’s what I’d been conditioned to expect with such access, desirability, and favoritism.But no.Dorothy was dark-skinned, described as striking, admired by politicians, desired by colonial men. Her achievements should be taught in school — and yet she’s barely remembered. One wonders if we would know her name if her skin were lighter like Elizabeth Dido Belle or her life more scripted and tragic like Sally Hemmings.Dorothy Kirwan Thomas was the exception, not the rule, in a world that often refuses to associate darkness with beauty or softness or wealth.That’s why I paused and shared the recent New York Times article celebrating The Gilded Age on HBO. The series is well done and its portrayal of Black high society in the 1880s is masterful. The article features Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald, and Denée Benton discussing the dual burden of classism and colorism.As Denée speaks about working on the show: “We have an opportunity to show something that’s never been onscreen. We have to widen this lens.”Phylicia says, “The concerns of an era might be different, but people are still people.”Audra adds, “But where we are right now, some of them are quite similar.”Colorism didn’t disappear with integration. I know that because I went to school in the “colorblind” North and still experienced the paper bag test, a cruel whisper from Jim Crow, it was obvious.Colorism didn’t vanish when we elected a Black president.It’s why books like The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett struck such a nerve in 2020. Set in the fictional town of Mallard, it shows families fracturing under the pressure to assimilate and even pass.I return to this quote from Sonali Dev’s 2019 novel, Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors — a love story between a darker-skinned Rawandan Anglo-Indian chef and a lighter-skinned Indian-American neurosurgeon:“The syntax of prejudice—threaded into conversation with the perfect pauses and facial expressions—was like ciphers and spy codes. The meaning clear to those it was meant for. To everyone else, it was harmless scribbles. Easy enough to deny.”Denying the lingering effects of colorism is sad. It hides in tone and tone policing. In the silence of those who don’t speak up or question biases. It can even come down to who we’re allowed to root for.So no, we haven’t solved colorism, classism, or the big R word.Yet there’s hope in storytelling.I applaud The Gilded Age for giving us something new for TV, portraying Black affluence in the 1800s with elegance, and power and nuance.And to my fellow writers: I say don’t stop. The market may shift. Budgets may tighten. But keep telling stories that challenge the hierarchy and bias. Keep writing histories that include all aspects of humanity now and in the past.Readers? Please lock in.Buy the books.Request them at libraries.Share titles that stir...
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    12 m
  • Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes

    Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes
    Jul 8 2025
    We’ve all been worrying—rightfully—about AI stealing the work of artists and authors. That’s a valid and growing concern. In March of this year, I found out that Meta’s engine, according to The Atlantic, scraped 27 of my 28 published books.The only reason it didn’t get March’s release A Wager at Midnight was because it hadn’t hit the shelves yet. Theft in broad daylight.But this goes deeper than just copyright violations. We’re seeing something more insidious: the rise of AI-generated scams, fakery, and lies. And I’m not talking about science fiction. I’m talking about now.On platforms like TikTok and X, faked videos are being created and/or shared with shocking ease—videos that can ruin reputations, twist narratives, and even make the UK tabloid press bite and republish the lies for a wider international audience. I’ve seen articles run in The Daily Mail that pose lies as questions, which gives dodgy accountability while still spreading misinformation. It’s manipulation masquerading as curiosity. Yet many look at lying headlines and accept them as true.A report by Upwind published in December says that 87% of Americans are worried about being scammed by AI. That is a lot of people. It’s a huge concern, especially when truth tellers are losing their jobs or seemingly capitulating because of fears of being sued, losing access, or targeted and harassed. The “other side” is not just lying but they are weaponizing the instruments that we are supposed to trust and inflicting consequences on anyone saying or writing something they disagree with.The Big Beautiful LiesI must say, the lies can be compelling. Let’s look at an easy topic, travel. I mean, who doesn’t want a travel guide? I buy them quite often for research on big cities or exotic locations.According to Axios, AI-generated travel guides, self-help books, and even mathematics are popular to scam. Now I have to say—math is hard enough. Why are you going to use a robot to put up something that can hurt a kid’s education. And please don’t have my characters walking down the wrong streets.Yet the boldness of the lying is getting worse. People are using AI to write books and then publish them under real authors’ names. Savannah Guthrie in 2024 was done so dirty. She wrote the book Mostly What God Does. Scammers using AI wrote workbooks, studies, and companion guides for her book and published them on Amazon under her name.Kara Swisher, the tech maven faced it too: fake “biographies” about her own life showed up ahead of her memoir’s release, Burn Book, in 2024. Jane Friedman details on her blog her own horror story, where a scammer used AI to write Friedman-like books, and then published those books under Friedman’s name. And the proceeds went to the bots.These AI scams confuse real readers. They have the potential to damage reputations and dilute the credibility of authors—an author’s brand can take decades to build.Imagine what happens to a debut author whose idea has become popular on TikTok, getting beat to her book launch by an AI scam. And because debuts aren’t yet industry names, they lose the credibility game.I used to think that AI scams were going to catch my grandma or folks not paying attention. Nope. AI is giving thieves the ability to put together more convincing emails and websites to ensnare everyone. It’s not just grandma and Social Security, or the foreign soldiers needing help to get a fortune out of a war zone—we’re talking sophisticated scams that use AI to reconstruct your habits. They may be scanning emails or even listening to conversations through AI upgrades on things that shouldn’t have AI at all.This is phishing on a whole new level. And we’re all set up to be scammed. It’s no longer going to be easy to tell a scam by bad grammar, doxing, or fraudulent websites. AI is making everything harder to detect. AI should be used to make things better, but in the hands of bots and scammers it is a nightmare.No Free Rides or ShadesI recently did a small brand deal for gummy vitamins. I choked on a cornflake as a kid—swallowing is hard. And please don’t even think of me taking anything that’s a horse pill. Anyway, now I’m getting little offers. Most of the offers that don’t come from a collaborator’s platform are probably scams. So there are no free sunglasses.How do we protect ourselves?You can’t trust your eyes anymore. Nor your ears—AI can clone a voice. It can fake a face. It can forge a whole book.But you can protect yourself:* Verify Every Fact – Before you repeat or share get several sources. I want to say reputable, but that’s hard to define right now.* Check Sources That Don’t Agree With You – Find several and verify dates, times, etc. If they match, you have a fact. If they don’t, you have a lie, a manipulation, or someone’s opinion.* Search Smart – Check authors’ websites, join their newsletter, and follow creatives on their...
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    12 m
  • Lessons from Indoctrination

    Lessons from Indoctrination
    Jul 1 2025
    Flying home from the Historical Novel Society conference, I learned a lesson in indoctrination. I’m on a fast-moving deadline for a special project, but I had to go. HNS holds a special place for me. My very first HNS conference changed the trajectory of my life.Before attending in 2019, I published lovely Regency romances. Sweet, comforting, polite novels—educating the world through fun, nonthreatening, history-filled reads.But HNS cracked something open. Meeting a tribe of fellow history nerds and selling the book I never thought I’d sell—Island Queen, the biographical fiction about Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, one of the richest Black women in the Georgian world, a woman who bought her freedom and defies every rule and obstacle to live freely—that gave me the courage to keep telling stories that tug at my heart and mind.Being free to create is a gift. One that’s hard to achieve. Black and brown creators, and women creators, have been indoctrinated, fed rules in the simplest of terms that challenge our freedom. Rules such as:* That more ethnic the cover, the more it can impact book sales—or determine where a book gets shelved.* That a pen name that sounds like a man’s carries more heft.* That “historical accuracy” will be weaponized to silence you if you make one mistake.* That if you fail, your failure will become the reason the next person who looks like you gets turned away.You’ll never know how much that last one haunted me. How it still probably drives me to go the extra mile.And I share all this to say: we’ve all been indoctrinated by our circumstances.Writers learn quickly by how we’ve been treated—and how we’ve seen others treated—in publishing. It’s hard to break the pattern. And it’s about logic. It’s 1 + 1 = 2 when one sees patterns repeating.And you, the listener—you’ve been indoctrinated.Certain patterns, behaviors, even thoughts have been ingrained through images and repetition. This was made clear to me on my flight home.Flying back from Vegas, Atlanta’s weather did not cooperate. Several delays and cancellations later, I was finally on my way but rerouted through Minneapolis. I’d arrived in Atlanta with just a four-hour delay and a bump up to first class. All was good.But I wasn’t prepared for the real lesson I’d take from that flight.An older gentleman sat beside me. The moment we took off, he flicked on his monitor and tuned into the news. He looked like a typical executive—loafers, golf watch, faint aftershave. He popped in his headphones, stared at the screen, and then drifted off to sleep.I was writing but I couldn’t help watching. Something about flickering images in my periphery always pulls me in. For ten minutes, I stared at his monitor. No sound—just headlines and smiling faces discussing stories that disturbed me.Ice raids with masked men capturing women on the street. The host smiled.Florida detention camps pop onto the screen. The smiling host makes it appear to be a pitch for a Disney vacation.And my neighbor slept. Peacefully. Whatever was being whispered in his ear lulled him into calm.I sat there gobsmacked.This is indoctrination.Indoctrination is subtle, yet powerful.It’s not about shouting.It’s about repeating.It’s about phrasing.It’s about making you feel safe while you’re being lulled into believing counterintuitive things.The TV’s formula was simple:* Repeat the same emotionally charged themes again and again.* Print aggressive words: sue, threaten, destroy, take back, fight for your children.* Paint the other side as monsters trying to take away your rights—your autonomy, your voice, your values.* Frame reasonable actions as extreme.* Show flags. Cue nostalgia. Stir something primal.* Smile while doing it.And the man next to me? He slept. Fully content. The world whispering in his ear made sense. That’s when I understood the terrifying genius of it.People aren’t being brainwashed. They’re being comforted—soothed by simple stories, a few buzzwords, and a familiar rhythm.In this whispering world, empathy is suspect.Fairness? A threat.Truth? Conditional.How else do you explain people cheering for a roofer—someone who rebuilt their home after a hurricane—being rounded up and sent to a detention camp being pictured as a theme park?What happened to questioning things?When did we decide that cruelty is an acceptable solution?Why is it okay to sleep through someone else’s pain?Be awake.Don’t let anyone tell you you’re overreacting.You’re not a sucker for caring. You’re human.And to my fellow protestors and change-makers: we can’t just fight with facts and five-point plans. Shame doesn’t move people. Complexity doesn’t sway them.If your message makes them feel stupid, they’ll dig in and side with the whisperers.So what can we do?We make the stakes as clear as possible.We must give up the five-dollar words.Because those words only land with the most liberal among us. And as ...
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    12 m
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