Word.ws English Dictionary

Own Voices

Own Voices proper noun: a literary movement centering books (particularly children's and young-adult fiction) about marginalized people written by authors of the same group.

Proper noun

Own Voices

  1. (attributive, often) A literary movement centering books (particularly children's and young-adult fiction) about marginalized people written by authors of the same group.
    • “The Hate U Give” is an “Own Voices” book, which means that it's about a diverse character and is written by an author from the same diverse group.2017 March 2, Hiba Tahir, “Swipe Right”, in The Student Printz, University of Southern Mississippi, page 5
    • Own voices story about autism, dating and the joy of growing up.2020, Australian Collective Stand: Rights Catalogue Frankfurt Book Fair 2020, page 27

Origin of Own Voices

Coined by Dutch author Corinne Duyvis on Twitter in 2015 as a hashtag for recommending children's books with "diverse characters written by authors from that same diverse group."

Questions about Own Voices

What does Own Voices mean?
Own Voices means a literary movement centering books (particularly children's and young-adult fiction) about marginalized people written by authors of the same group.
What part of speech is Own Voices?
Own Voices is a proper noun.

Words near Own Voices in the dictionary

  1. own label
  2. own labels
  3. own motion
  4. own time, own target
  5. own up
  6. Own Voices
  7. own-account
  8. own-goal
  9. own-goals
  10. ownability
  11. ownable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Own Voices (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Own Voices.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/own_voices. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.