It took award-winning author Andrew Boryga 10 years to write his debut novel "Victim," which was published in March.
When I talked to Boryga recently about spending so much time on the project, and if it would have taken that long if it wasn't so personal, he said, “I really wanted to get it right. I really wanted to not cut any corners.
“I wanted to write something that I felt would not only be entertaining,” Boryga continued, “But hopefully start a conversation, and get people thinking.”
And this is exactly what Boryga has accomplished. His words have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Daily Beast, in addition to other publications and he has been awarded various prizes from Cornell University, The Michener Foundation and The Society of Professional Journalists.
"Victim" tells the tale of Javi, a talented young writer from the Bronx, who quickly finds out that playing the victim is a valuable way to fast-track his nonexistent career into literary greatness. Javi does have some personal trauma, like witnessing his father’s murder and seeing his best friend Gio choose the streets, which eventually gets him incarcerated. However, Javi grossly fabricates his role in all of this and enjoys the rewards until they blow up in his face.
"Victim" is at its best when explaining entry points and how hood politics work, and can serve as a guide to those hungry to publish minority pain and trauma, but disappear when positive stories from the same communities surface.
Read the Q&A of our conversation below to learn more about "Victim," how Boryga made the transition from the Bronx to a career in journalism and who has the right to tell what kinds of stories.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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Welcome, welcome. So first I want to say congratulations on a wonderful debut. Thank you for doing this. And I want to get right into it, man. How'd you come up with "Victim"?
Man, it was a long journey, brother. I started it 10 years ago, and it was really this friendship story at the center of it, Gio and Javi, trying to write about two kids that came from the same neighborhood in the Bronx, who just took really different paths in life.
And that was something I was obsessed with, because I had a lot of friends I grew up with who went to drugs or gangs and then I went to Cornell. And I went to these nice, fancy places, and I had a lot of survivor's guilt.
So I was trying to write this story about these two kids. And then that story just kept evolving. And I started writing for these publications, and dealing with editors who were like, "Oh, OK, you're from this background, you can write about these things. Let me get you to write more and more."
And at first I'm like, "OK, this is cool." But then I'm like, "Oh wait, this is all you want me to write about, isn't it? OK." And I don't know, man, and I would talk to a lot of people, writers of color too, especially, who were going through the same thing. And I'm like, this is weird. What is this about?
And so I started, Javi became somebody who turned to this ulterior version of me, who, instead of being weirded out about it like I was, just pulling back, he was like, "Nah, I'm going to give them exactly what they want, and I'm going to play my cards right and pimp this out to get where I wanted to be."
This story is definitely connected to almost any Black celebrity or public figure story. And if you pull back and think about it, it's what the American dream is.
Yeah, I think it is an American Dream story. It's like, Javi, he's trying to get his version of it, and he realizes, these are the cards that are handed to me, and he realizes what, if he wants to get where he wants to be, this is what he has to do. And he decides to just pimp it out.
And so I don't know, I think a lot of the country, we're all trying to sell a........