‘Writers of colo(u)r’ is a term which has emerged in the United States as an extrapolation from ‘people of color’, which itself emerged as a response to two issues: first, that many people in the USA who do not identify as white do not identify as black either; and, second, this more expansive terminology ‘acts as a recognition that certain people are racialized’, and allows for wider coalitions and more complex discussions, in addition to moving from a ‘negative’ (non-white) to a positive description. Writers of colour may be of African, Asian, Indigenous Australian, Native American or other heritage not discussed here.

The term ‘writer of colour’ is not uncontested in terms of its application. To begin with, it is a term used by US and Canadian writers, and by Caribbean authors resident in those countries; it has not been widely used as yet in the United Kingdom or elsewhere. More important, it has to be used with caution when one is dealing with authors who, while presented as writers of colour in the USA or the European market, are members of the dominant, majority group in the land in which they were born, lived and wrote. Miyuki Miyabe is a Japanese author who continues to live in Japan, but whose work has been available in translation since 1999, and who some consider a ‘writer of colour’ within the Anglo-American market. Hayao Miyazaki, author of one of the great Japanese fantasy mangas, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1982–94), is similarly positioned, part of the hegemonic culture in which he lives, but potentially read as ‘other’ when read within the Anglo-American fantasy market.