writing the main character as different ethnic group than self?

Y'see, Lassie, y'don' often realize y'got a wee bit'a the tin-ear fer other cultures, and yer likely to offend, even if y'didna meanta.

Agents and publishers and Great Spirit frown upon contrivances, imprecisions, and affectations. Getting details wrong cause paleface writer heap big trouble. When you get the rejection letters, you wish you never left teepee. Wish you never bought computing machine. All that left for you, consolation with firewater.

I don't reckon y'all wanna be toyin' wit' otha folkses' stories, less'n y'all ain't too concerned 'bout gettin' it all wrong, makin' a fool of yo damn self and bein' 'ccused of some ol' racism.

I'm white, but one of the main characters (actually, probably the big secondary character) in my story isn't. It doesn't influence anything about the way I write him, though. The big influences on his life were being neglected by a drug addict mother, not his race. To be honest, it hadn't even really occurred to me to wonder about him being stereotypical or contrived, but I think that's because of what I said before.

Who is the character as a person? It might be that he is influenced by particular religious or cultural ideals, but the point is to see the person as a whole. Personality comes first. Personality traits are things we are born with, they're genetic. The rest are just influences. I'd guess that if you thought of the character as a person first, and then if you wanted to include other influences you could ask yourself how they would affect your character.

If it was me, I'd also probably be trying to avoid stereotypes in general. I wouldn't want a super-smart genius math-whiz Asian kid who studies all the time, for example. I'd actually probably try to move somewhat far away from the stereotypes.

If it wasn't a group I felt comfortable with and are knowledgeable about, however, I personally wouldn't do it. I would also want to have someone who is a member of that community to discuss things with as I went. For instance, I've had a few Muslim friends over the years, and so were I writing a book about a man who was Muslim, I would have good sources to draw on.

All you can really do is try a bit and see how it works. I don't think it's impossible to write outside of our race/gender/religion at all.

kaitie said:

I'm white, but one of the main characters (actually, probably the big secondary character) in my story isn't. It doesn't influence anything about the way I write him, though. The big influences on his life were being neglected by a drug addict mother, not his race.

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Hmmmm, I don't know, Kaitie. I suppose a lot depends on how it's handled and what the book is really about, but some people may consider this very stereotypical. If there are other non-white characters in the book who present a counterside to the neglectful, drug-addicted mother, then that's one thing. But if this is the only side portrayed, it certainly has the potential to come across as shallow and cliche. It's like a person of color writing about a white racist but not showing other whites in the book who don't subscribe to such idealogy.

I think the non-US aspect might be another aspect of this to consider. Race (esp. black and white divides) is pretty huge in the US. I've seen online conversations that compare the racial issues in the US to the class issues in the UK - not that there isn't classism in the US and racism in the UK, but the emphasis society places on these categories seems to be reversed between the two countries. So if you're writing for a US market and your non-white character is black, especially if your character is dealing with Americans, you'd need to be aware of the subtle tensions that exist in a totally different country.

I've been told different things by people of colour on this issue (it's almost like they're not monolithic!). I've been told that I should write characters of colour (I'm white), because they are under-represented and it's the responsibility of all allies in the fight against racism to try to remedy that situation. This duty comes with the responsibility to write the characters 'right', of course, and what 'right' means seems to vary from reader to reader. I've also been told to stay away from it, because there's no way that I, an outsider, could ever truly understand what it feels like to be a minority, and I would be offensive without even meaning to be. I haven't done a study, but I think that the second view generally comes from people of colour within the US, where, as I said, race seems to be much more politicized than elsewhere.

Long story short - no idea what you (or I) should do. Do you know several people who are the race of the character you want to write, who could beta for you and pick out issues? Would the race of your character be an important plot point, or just a character issue? (ie. I wouldn't presume to write a story that focuses a black person dealing with racism in the US, because I truly don't know how that would feel. Then again, according to the second group of arguers from the paragraph above, EVERY story about a black character in the US is going to have that character dealing with racism.)

Good luck!

Hedgetrimmer said:

Hmmmm, I don't know, Kaitie. I suppose a lot depends on how it's handled and what the book is really about, but some people may consider this very stereotypical. If there are other non-white characters in the book who present a counterside to the neglectful, drug-addicted mother, then that's one thing. But if this is the only side portrayed, it certainly has the potential to come across as shallow and cliche. It's like a person of color writing about a white racist but not showing other whites in the book who don't subscribe to such idealogy.

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Maybe it's just me, but I wasn't aware non-whites being drug addicts was a stereotype...

I dunno - I know there's a stereotype of people living in the slums being drug addicts, and there's a stereotype of mostly non-whites living in the slums. Put the two together, and yeah...

kuwisdelu said:

Maybe it's just me, but I wasn't aware non-whites being drug addicts was a stereotype...

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It's too early in the morning to even bother.

On ethnicity, yes. I do it a lot. I do lots of research and interview people from that ethnic group, to get it right. On the stereotype issue. You can learn a lot from sociology and statistics. Some stereotypes are true.

On religion though, if the story isn't specifically about religion I don't mention it at all. I don't want to steal attention away from what's important in the story by annoying the reader with irrelevancies. I've so far never mentioned any specific religion in anything I've ever finished writing. I only talk about it in the most general terms. My characters could belong to any, or none. We're never told their opinions on any. The stories still work.

I avoid religions like the plague in my writing, because I know I'd just make an arse of myself.

The importand thing is that you get it right.

I fear that for me, getting it truly right might mean immersing myself in that ethnicity's culture for quite a while.

I say this because of an experience at the theatre the other night. Our regional theatre has been doing August Wilson's full cycle of plays on being black in America, one per year. Nearly all the faces in the audience are white, for these plays and all the others of any given season. But they'd somehow promoted Two Trains Running within my city's black community, both filling the house and greatly increasing the number of black members of the audience.

I 'got' the play; Wilson is accessible. But there were a dozen or more times at which only the black people in the audience reacted, finding humor (and once, shocked surprise) which I simply did not see. Not that I saw it and didn't find it funny (or startling), but I literally did not know exactly what elicited their response. Obviously Wilson had tapped into a collective experience of the black community which excluded those who are not part of it.

While I'm comfortable writing outside my gender, age, sexual orientation, and other small stretches, this experience makes me think I might not be able to write too far from my own ethnic background.

Maryn, gonna get her ham!

I've written from races other than my own without too much trouble. I think so long as the defining characteristic of your character isn't his/her race and religion, you should be fine. Even in race-related stories, you have to make a complete person.

Maryn, you make a good point. It's not just writing about race and ethnicity but also about the culture from which a group evolves. It doesn't surprise me one bit that whites may miss a lot of Wilson's allusions, metaphors and jokes. If you haven't grown up immersed in that culture, listening to old folks telling stories that they themselves were told by their elders, it's nearly impossible to tap into a collective memory I think every culture shares. And in case you didn't get it, the running line about "I'm gonna get my ham" isn't about a ham at all. It's an allusion to blacks' having been promised 40 acres and a mule. August was a master of metaphor.

My protag is not even human. Does that count?

Hi, imperiex and welcome to AW.

The Enchanted Inkpot Community on LJ recently had a discussion about pitfalls in writing about other cultures during a wider discussion on diversity in children's fantasy. I've linked to it in case it's any use to you.

imperiex:
I'm writing a story and I'm thinking of writing the main character as someone who isn't in my ethnic group and belongs to a different religion. He comes into a community of people (whose members are in my ethnic group) and brings changes in their way of life, and conflict sparks. So the decision to make him a different ethnic group from my own is crucial to the story IMO.

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It basically comes down to doing your research and writing your character such that their ethnicity and religion is part of their wider character rather than a list of points that defines them precisely.

Personally, I think that as long as the character is written well it doesn't matter if you're part of that character's ethnic/religious group or not. If we all only wrote what we knew then the world of fiction would be a very dull place.

MM

Wait--I'm supposed to write characters who are the SAME as me?

How boring.

If you haven't already read it, I recommend Writing the Other: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. It's a small book aimed specifically at writers and shows what to think about when writing characters who are "other" to you (not just other races, but another age, sex, sexual orientation, religion and physical ability).

It's also worth noting that some writers (Richard Price leaps to mind) are absolutely masterful at writing characters of ethnicities other than their own. (Damn it, why can't I be Richard Price?)

Maryn, too white-bread

Hedgetrimmer said:

Hmmmm, I don't know, Kaitie. I suppose a lot depends on how it's handled and what the book is really about, but some people may consider this very stereotypical. If there are other non-white characters in the book who present a counterside to the neglectful, drug-addicted mother, then that's one thing. But if this is the only side portrayed, it certainly has the potential to come across as shallow and cliche. It's like a person of color writing about a white racist but not showing other whites in the book who don't subscribe to such idealogy.

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I get what you're saying. It could come off as shallow, though I would hope not. I've had a couple of people reading it (one a minority) and neither has had any issue with it so far. The villain is a white blond guy, this kid is one of the good guys, and to be honest his mother's drug use is associated more with his having superpowers than race (he doesn't live with her at the moment, so the situation with his past is just occasionally mentioned). Interesting thought, though. I'll have to go back and read when I'm finished to make sure it doesn't read that way. Like I said, I don't think it does.

kuwisdelu said:

Maybe it's just me, but I wasn't aware non-whites being drug addicts was a stereotype...

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Lol...to be honest I think I've associated it more with whites, but that's because the drug addicts I've seen were meth addicts in the Midwest, which is basically what I based his mom on. I do think, though, there's more of the assumption that people doing/selling drugs are low income minorities living in the inner city. I can think of a few movies off the top of my head that have used that.

Personally, I don't really make the association, but I can see how other people would. I don't really think I've been irresponsible about it, though.

James Baldwin did this without being offensive. The characters just happened to be white (although I guess Giovanni was more mediterranean).

Some stereotypes you might want to avoid:

- The computer-whizz geek Asian (normally male but can be female too)
- The black guy who lives on a council estate and is involved in drugs/guns/knife crime, whether they are the perpertrator or victim of.
- The brash stupid American (who appears in English shows)
- The evil posh Englishman/jolly Cockney (who appears in American shows)
- The Italian stallion/ hot French lover
- The rude French person who doesn't like anything that isn't French and thinks that Britain is uncultured.
- The really organised dictatorial German
- The lunatic nun/closet monk
- The Muslim terrorist

I could go on but I won't. Some of those stereotypes are lazy/cliche, such as the Italian stallion or the loony nun, but some are just offensive, full stop. Whether they are true or not, these aspects should not define the characters. When writing a character of another culture who has a culture clash, essentially you're showing that this character is a representative of their culture- so it's vital that you base it on fact as opposed to the stereotypical perception.

A different ethnic group does not matter.

A different cultural group matters.

I feel confident that I could write about any middle-class American -- that being my cultural group -- no matter if that character is white, black, or yellow. All those ethnic groups share the same culture within that limited social boundary. Even the slight differences, such as the legacy of racism that black Americans have to deal with, are known to me enough that I believe I could portray them convincingly.

But I would be hard-pressed to write about a dirt-poor white American, or an asian person who spent their entire life in Tokyo, or a black man living as a Muslim in Spain, without doing some research. The differences in culture are so great as to cause problems. I wouldn't know how their everyday lives go, nor how they would react to external stimuli, nor what kind of social and psychological rules they instinctively follow. I'd have to research all of that.

So -- don't worry too much about ethnic characters in a culture that you know well. Worry about characters, no matter their ethnic background, in a culture that you do not understand. Do some research. You need to get into your characters' heads, that's all.

Lady Ice said:

When writing a character of another culture who has a culture clash, essentially you're showing that this character is a representative of their culture- so it's vital that you base it on fact as opposed to the stereotypical perception.

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But when writing a charcter of your own culture you aren't showing that the character is representative of your culture?

Can an African-American writer have an African-American character who who lives on a council estate and is involved in drugs/guns/knife crime, whether they are the perpertrator or victim of?

Seems to me all you're leaving me is the evil white guy.

Tell the truth, and screw anyone who doesn't like it.