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I've been thinking lately about if/how to write about a minority I'm not part of. Specifically, about me, as a white girl, writing about non-white characters. This could apply both to fanfic and non-fanfic, but I'm mostly thinking about the latter, because in fanfic, if the canon glosses over certain aspects of racial differences, for example, it's easy enough to follow its lead and not bring that up in fanfic.
But when I'm creating my own canon, that's a decision I actually have to make, and it's one that keeps making me wibble like there's no tomorrow. On the one hand, I don't want to write "colourblind", but on the other hand, I also don't want to fuck up if I do write about the more touchy subjects.
(And that's not even mentioning the "How the fuck do you show-not-tell race?" issue, which is something else I wrestle with, and augh.)
So, yeah. Thoughts? Opinions? Pointers? Swats upside the head? Anything? Like I said, this is mostly a non-fanfic thing, but opinions pertaining to fanfic arealso welcome, as I do write non-white characters in fanfic as well. *vague handwave at Lee and Mickey* (This is not a crossover bunny!)
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Hit "submit" too soon ...
Yeah, that's pretty much my big fear, as well. :/
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Um. That's about the extent of my advice. I suppose my real advices is to be matter of fact when it's a matter of character description, don't do anything that isn't a part of the character and world you are trying to create, and experiment until you find something you like.
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try reading some stuff by octavia butler; she has at least one series that follows a black woman (at least) as the main protagonist. (plus, she has a short story collection in which there is a truly fantastic sci-fi male pregnancy. she's kind of one of my favorite authors ever.)
of course, she is mostly sci-fi, less fantasy, which i know tends to be your focus. hm. basically, yeah, i would try reading books written from non-white perspectives and see what makes them different.
when you're actually creating, though, well, you get a lot of leeway. depending on how the peoples of your world move about, there could be a lot of intermingling or there could be almost none and people would find foreign faces shocking! etc etc. (like, i'm from a part of the u.s. with a lot of different communities represented, so i'm very used to seeing different colors/fashions/etc etc and it would be weird without it.)
i'm not sure if this is helpful, but i'm totally available to bounce ideas, too. :)
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So, yeah. I've been dealing with this. I went to the 'Where have all the people of color gone" panel at Escapade (run by Lady Jax and
I asked her the same thing. Here's my email and her response...
Her response:
Sorry for the long comment, but I thought you might like to read it.
Pam has also offered to see if she knows any P.o.C. who'd be willing to talk to this very white girl about what it's like to be a professional ad exec in LA. Research is keen...
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Also, your icon is making me think about Lee in a toga, and um. I'll be in my bunk.
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Bwahahaha. Hooray for toga parties.
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Also, this might just be me, but lately I've been seeing this a lot in published fiction: when the minority character first appears, the author goes out of their way to describe the colour of their skin. "She was tall, and the colour of coffee with two creams. Her light brown skin hinted at something more than just African ancestry" (that's almost a direct quote from...I can't remember what, but as the story goes on, her race has absolutely nothing to do with it. And no one ever describes how pale the white people are.) For some reason, that mildly irritates me, especially when at least a paragraph is devoted to it, and it has no bearing on the story.
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Josh Whedon and Race, which really got me thinking.
Frustration with the OMG! We're so good! We don't talk about race! crowd.
Good things, which got my thoughts in gear. Might work for yours, too. I'm terribly excited about my Mythic Africa now.
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basically, yeah, i would try reading books written from non-white perspectives and see what makes them different.
I should've thought of that myself, shouldn't I? I'm really good at missing the obvious. <g>
(like, i'm from a part of the u.s. with a lot of different communities represented, so i'm very used to seeing different colors/fashions/etc etc and it would be weird without it.)
I think this is actually part of my problem--I'm used to seing lots of different races/nationalities represented as welll (though not quite the same way as in the US, and there's a big difference even between Belgium and the UK, but I digress), so when I'm creating characters, they're almost automatically going to include some non-white people, because that's what I'm used to seeing. But then I start thinking, especially with contemporary settings, that not acknowleding anything othr than skin colour is different about these character is whitewashing, which I try not to do. :/
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For instance, he has dreads. Now, part of me thinks that people will go "STEROTYPIST!" and get the pitchforks if I do that and he's black, while if I did it and he was white people would just think it's edgy. ...
Oh, god, I so feel you there. In my one contemproary novel, I have a character who's Asian (Vietnamese, to be precise), and I keep worrying that making her parents so strict about school stuff is stereotyping, and then I worry I'm just being oversensitive because I don't worry like that about giving the Irish-descent family red hair, and AUGH!
Trying is better than not trying. Every time you write something, you
learn.
You know, I think I need to cross-stitch that and frame it or something, and then stop worrying and just go for it. I can always worry about this in the editing phase.
And yes, research good. Also, an excuse to buy more books! Um, I mean.
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Though then you do run into the other side of that coin, the "white until proven otherwise" syndrome, and considering that there were people who didn't realise that Cho Chang was Asian, ands the Patil sisters were Indian, I don't know that I can really count on surnames to give people a clue, even in a contemporary setting.
I think I just need to do some research into Vietnamese culture formy contemporary novel, and see if I can weave some more cultural details into the novel, without getting all "OMG look at me, I did my research, SEE?" about it.
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Somewhere in Belgium, my mother is laughing hysterically, and she doesn't know why. :D
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I really have no answer. I just wanted to share the woe.
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you could also do it this way: why is color important? because it's obvious. therefore, everyone's color is important, but only in terms of how it relates to you, right? an asian kid raised by white people is gonna have a different experience than an asian kid raised by asian people, as an example.
it's a combination of what's familiar and what's traditional in the character's community, ultimately. i'm not sure if that helped at all. XD
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Anyway. Not a topic I've got a lot of experience with, but this was the first thing that came into my head, and I thought it was interesting. *shrugs*
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*shares woe. also cookies*
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Also, I have a wee kiddie primer book about African culture, if you want to borrow it? Might be a start.
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But yes, and even if they manage to mention it the first time gracefully, characters are often then reduced to "I'm gay! Did I mention I'm gay? SO GAY! Because I like guys! Not that I'm ever actually going to kiss one but, GAY!" And now I'm wondering what the race equivalent of Will-and-Grace-syndrome is, if there is one. Hm.
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I'm not sure if I'd want people to forget/not notice some of my characters are nonwhite, though, although I suppose it's unavoidable in some ways. *ponders*
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And thank you! You just gave me something to poke at in regards to Jonathan in Elfstone! Because I know that, and why, Jesse's race in Strange Love is important (because it's what makes her different, and "growing up different in a small town" is what the whole book is about), but I need to figure out people's attitudes towards non-white characters would be in Avenant before I can figure out how much Jonathan's race would matter.
(... And it just occured to me that I never actually mentioned Jonathan being Middle-Eastern-looking in the book at all, apart from a mention of "olive skin," which is disappearing in the rewrite, because ew bad writing. *makes a note of this*)
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We are baking peanut butter cookies.
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Yeah...I saw it as a problem with me as a reader, though, as much as anything, because my "default" view of characters when I'm reading is usually that they're white unless it explicitly says otherwise (which I realize is stupid, but I can't seem to get rid of it entirely). And in the case of Anansi Boys, it certainly does say otherwise, it just doesn't beat you over the head with it.
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Not that you'll get it perfect, but hell. Someone writing about the Majority can still mess things up because--
Even without the question of race, everyone is not the same.
If they were we'd all be a stereotype.
Dealing with racial issues during the Immigration debate brought this home to me. Even within the same community, even within a single "unifying" incident such as our walk outs and rallies, there wasn't a single voice.
It's important to be true to your character, take his or her experiences with the Majority and race into account.
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I think that discussion linked about Anansi Boys makes an interesting point - we all have our 'default normal'. For us, it's White, and unless someone says "not white", we don't notice. It's not racisim so much as the belief unless told otherwise, people are like us.
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This "writing" stuff is hard.
Tell me about it. They need to work on this whole cybernetics thing, so I can just syphon images into people's brain directly instead of having to go through that whole "words" thing.
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