A Goodreads user asked Robin Stevens:

What makes you qualified as a White woman to write about internalised racism from an Asian character? How can you justify writing this internalised racism without the experience of it? As a minority myself, it is deeply uncomfortable to hear this in writing from a White person, as it seems more like racism you have toward those minorities, as opposed to internalised racism experienced by minorities.

Robin Stevens Thanks so much for this.

First of all, I do think as a writer that it's important to write about people from lots of different backgrounds, including those you don't have personal experiences of. If you don't do that, you aren't reflecting the realities of the world. Obviously it's incredibly important to back that up with a lot of research, sensitive thought and discussion with people who do share those experiences. I work really hard to do that, and to represent my characters as best I can - I acknowledge that I'm always learning with each book I write, and I know that not everything I've written can be perfect, or can leave every reader feeling seen. I always try to do better in each new book, and I think it's really important to listen to criticisms like this.

I think you're talking about Hazel's internalised racism in the first book, MMU. I wrote that book a long time ago, and would approach that plot line a little differently if I was writing it now, because I have had ten more years to learn and grow and think about the world. But I still do believe that *for that character*, at that point in her life, it makes sense for Hazel to be struggling with a negative self-image. As a Chinese girl looking at representations of E/SE Asian people in Western media in the 1930s, she would have seen hideously racist caricatures like Fu Manchu and almost nothing else. In the first book she's got this idea of the ideal girl from the Western media she's been consuming and she feels like she doesn't match up with that. It's of course totally wrong, and I spend the rest of the series showing that and having her grow in confidence until by the ninth book she's proud of who she is and what she looks like, but I think it makes sense for Hazel to start from a place of negativity about herself given who she is and how she sees the world, even if that negativity really saddens me.

In contrast, I've liked writing about May, Hazel's little sister, because she has a much more confident self-image from the jump, and would never want to be or look like anyone other than who she is. I didn't want to give her the same struggles that Hazel had, because as you say it's not a nice story and it's not something I want to keep dwelling on. I think there are ways to write about racism, and about characters experiencing racism, that don't come from within.

Ultimately, you can of course feel that what I've written doesn't match up with how you see the world or what you would do, and that I haven't hit the mark with my characters. If everyone just liked everything I wrote I'd have nothing to learn and nowhere to grow. So it is useful to me to hear this, and think about it and hopefully build on it, even if you decide you don't want to read any more of my books.

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