"With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it's a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from"
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The line lands like a small protest against the way culture gets shelved: not by theme or craft, but by identity tags that make a novel sound like it comes with homework. As an athlete, Shawn Johnson speaks from a world that’s also obsessed with categories - women’s events, “international” competition, the constant sorting of people into lanes. That background gives the complaint a practical edge: labels can be useful for finding your footing, until they turn into fences.
Her phrasing (“say, a Muslim story or an African story”) points to media framing more than authorship itself. The subtext is about gatekeeping: when a book is marketed as “for” a demographic, it quietly signals who it’s “not for,” shrinking the audience before anyone opens the cover. The word “essentially” does a lot of work, insisting the core of the story is not its cultural wrapper but its human stakes - desire, fear, ambition, family pressure - the stuff that travels.
At the same time, the quote brushes up against a current debate: calling something “universal” can be an invitation to empathy, or it can flatten difference and treat specificity as a niche flavoring. Johnson seems to be arguing for a both/and. Let the story be rooted - Muslim, African, anything - without being reduced to that root. Her real target is the lazy media shorthand that turns lived detail into a genre label, and then wonders why readers don’t cross the aisle.
Her phrasing (“say, a Muslim story or an African story”) points to media framing more than authorship itself. The subtext is about gatekeeping: when a book is marketed as “for” a demographic, it quietly signals who it’s “not for,” shrinking the audience before anyone opens the cover. The word “essentially” does a lot of work, insisting the core of the story is not its cultural wrapper but its human stakes - desire, fear, ambition, family pressure - the stuff that travels.
At the same time, the quote brushes up against a current debate: calling something “universal” can be an invitation to empathy, or it can flatten difference and treat specificity as a niche flavoring. Johnson seems to be arguing for a both/and. Let the story be rooted - Muslim, African, anything - without being reduced to that root. Her real target is the lazy media shorthand that turns lived detail into a genre label, and then wonders why readers don’t cross the aisle.
Quote Details
| Topic | Book |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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