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Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley

Write of Passage by Vanessa Riley

By: 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 Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Dead to Words

    Dead to Words
    Jul 22 2025
    “Some will love you, some will hate you. It's the yin and yang of life. In a way, it makes it a beautiful journey of discovering and loving who you are. Haters, well, the worst they can do is hate. So I'm consciously ‘living life like it's platinum.’ And when the haters come around, I'll be like Teflon."—MJWThat’s a quote signed Mally Mal, who most knew as Malcolm-Jamal Warner—the beloved actor and director who was taken from us on July 20th. At 54, Malcolm-Jamal was still a young man with more to give.I was on that hot mess platform, sneaking around looking for my British feeds and Love Island Edits. Why can’t I seem to quit that platform? Then news hit of the tragedy. For once, for a solid hour, my feed had nothing but quotes from Jamal’s peers—celebrating his life, championing his work and work ethic. Others expressed shock and sent love to his family.It was an amazing, eerie thing to see this hot trash social feed be human. I think that’s Malcom-Jamal’s final miracle. People from all perspectives, from different political backgrounds, all ages—those who first saw Malcom-Jamal as Theo on their TVs growing up or caught him in streaming reruns—it was a love fest, a verbal and pictorial purge.And before that moment is lost on us, I just want to take another second to think of his other gifts.Did you know Malcolm-Jamal was also a poet?In January 2024, a video of his TED Talk was posted to YouTube of him performing one of his poems:“Vulnerability is My Superpower.”The man we knew as Theo—the actor, the director who did everything from the New Edition video for Heart Break to TV episodes like Season 8 of the Cosby Show, Episode 147 “Vanessa’s Big Fun” (if YKYK)—yes that Malcom-Jamal gave a TED Talk that, in this superhero-seeking world, stands out:Vulnerability is my superpower.He stepped up on the stage and quoted:“Vulnerability.Can be a scary thing even when we're on the mend.Black boys boast bravado, not to seem broken, and often so do Black men.I see you. Looking for clues. Listening for cues.Longing to know what I'm not telling you. As if I'm hiding in plain view.My most intimate thoughts belong to me. Like a woman's body when she says no.So I reserve the right to go as far as I like.Because though I live in the public eye,I don't subscribe to the dog and pony show.For I have learned to discern who cannot accept all of me.”—MJWThat was the quality I saw in Malcolm-Jamal’s acting. His presence defied toxic masculinity. It surged with quiet pride and gave us something raw—the boy next door, the smile that sits with ease.For those of us who write romance, that is the magic we want on the page for our heroes—someone who’s fighting the fight on the outside, but when he is with the one he loves, we see respect and vulnerability.Malcolm-Jamal was a musician, too. One with range.On his last album, in his song “Selfless,” he writes:“It's a piece about finding my voice, being comfortable in my own skin, and not being ruled by other people's opinion of me. It's a tricky place to be because, as an artist, what people think about you and your art is an important part of connecting to your audience and therefore, your success. However, living your life trying to please everyone else is not living.”That is a difficult ballad—to think about the definitions of success. Especially as a writer, or any type of creator, you need someone to like your work. When you’re a Black creator, you need somebody to champion and sing your praises because doors often close, heat comes from nowhere, and everyone is looking for a scandal to make some part of their mind say it was deserved, it was right for some negative attribution.It gets very difficult to walk in the light—to be light—when everyone seeks to dim it.Malcolm-Jamal knew this tension.His praises are being sung because he found his way.On that TED stage, he concluded:“Vulnerability is cool.It is strength. It still allows you to be a man,and vulnerability offers the greatest gift.It allows you to open up to yourself and love yourself.Because the most important thing, the most important thing,is the simple belief that you are enough.And as I stand here in the power of my own vulnerability,I am telling you—you are enough.Imagine. Just imagine what you could give to the world and what the world would see in you if you were no longer hiding in plain view.”Poetry works out those demons—the things that torture the soul.Dear readers, writers, creators—I need you to be poets.I need you to work out everything in your soul so that when it is your time, people can remember that the life you lived was about your gifts, not your flaws.That you spoke truth with joy and yes, vulnerability.And that every time you stepped up on stage, people could see the bright light in you.For you have light.We just need to be brave enough to let it shine.Thank you, Mally Mal, for your legacy of words and images.My prayers and...
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    12 mins
  • 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 mins
  • 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 mins

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