writing a fantasy story about racism

To Kill a Mockingbird comes to mind.

To Kill a Mockingbird?

Any books containing Nazis?

*thinks*

Minate said:

Is that the one with boo radly and a lawyer father defending an african american in a court case?

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Yes.

If it's a primary plot element, I think it might benefit you to do some interviews of people of different color/culture than your own. They might be able to offer you some deep insight, or give you examples of when they've come across it, how they felt at the time, and what they did because of it.
Fascinating approach to a book

The Left Hand of Darkness is practically required reading if you're writing spec fic about racism.

I second the talking to people with real life experiences. Nothing like a bit of oral history to bolster the empathic elements of writing.

I can see you have looked at the People of colour thread and there is a lot of discussion in there about this. I would also suggest looking at the thread entitled Feel like writing a -blank- character means I'm expressing my end-all opinion on -blank- people? which can be found at: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221888

and has a lot of useful discussion in there too (including the offense that many subgroups feel in reading cliches on thier group).

Fantasy is, IMO, a very good medium to discuss racism and other real world issues like this because it puts the serious controversial issue at a remove from the real world. Depending on what you are doing in your world building, your racism does not need to be 'humans vs other humans with a different skin colour' but rather 'humans vs elves' - especially as the elves are the ones likely to be in the position of feeling superior to and possibly expoiting the 'lesser' humans. 'Humans vs Orcs' is another one to consider. For this sort of setting, I advise looking at Terry Pratchett's discworld novels which deal with a lot of these issues (jingo and Thud being a main ones, with Jingo more directly covering 'racism' as it concerns different human cultures, but most of the later City Watch books include some element of racial tension). I would also consider Stan Nicholl's Orcs series which is written from the point of view of the Orcs and sees human responses to them.

Yes--interviews and reading books that deal with the subject, both genre and not genre. Octavia Butler's got some good stuff, too--Parable of the Sower.

I've got a short story in the trunk that deals with racism of a sort, but I've not had any luck hammering it out. No matter what I do, it comes across as preachy. I really like the idea, though, so I figure I'll come back to it when I'm a stronger writer.

Also going to echo talking to people with real life experiences. My mom and I were talking the other day about her growing up in the 40s and 50s in the deep deep south and she talked about things I'd never heard her talk about before. Put the issue in a new, and more personal, light for me.

Avatar - an allegory for European colonialism, the devaluation and decimation of native people.

I have a racial oppression theme in my ancient world fantasy manuscript, currently in the querying stage. In some ways, I find it easier to bring these issues into a fantasy world, since it's kind of "timeless" -- you don't have to worry about dating the story with real life historic references. But I still did research to get the attitudes right for the type of culture I was depicting.

Good luck!

Read some, and perhaps talk to some people, but also consider your own work and how things apply to it specifically. Sometimes, putting a fresh light on it will make it more poignant.

Also consider your own life. Although you may not have been subject to racism, it's likely that you have had some experience with prejudice. All of us have been shunned for being different. Explore the depth of those feelings in that moment they happened and magnify them. You can relate them to similar experiences and perhaps begin to grasp the nuances and subtleties. Consider the effects over time of what happens.

A Time to Kill. And for racism against a different group, Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, if you can get through it.

I would just write the actions and emotions and leave the analysis to the reader.

lbender said:

A Time to Kill. And for racism against a different group, Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, if you can get through it.

I would just write the actions and emotions and leave the analysis to the reader.

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Seconding this recommendation.

AyJay said:

Avatar - an allegory for European colonialism, the devaluation and decimation of native people.

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Avatar isn't a good example, as that's a stereotypical white saviour saves the noble savages story. It's the sort of thing you want to avoid. Which is why looking at real world racism stories is a better starting point.

I'd suggest considering which real world situations share aspects of the fictional one. Then find some first-hand accounts, rather than ones filtered through an outsider. A lot of stuff is available on blogs (often stuff that isn't available in published books). After you've read all that, you'll be in a better position to judge any novels you read.

For fictional stuff, Octavia Butler is a good speculative read. I'd also suggest X-Men, because it's had its share of stories that get the black civil rights movement (which it was based on), and stories which miss the mark. So you can see examples of good and bad handling in one setting.

Since you're writing fantasy you might also want to check out this page. (TV Trope Warning )

Canotila said:

The Left Hand of Darkness is practically required reading if you're writing spec fic about racism.

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I'd probably recommend the Lathe of Heaven first.

But definitely doing your research is good.

You might also consider playing Dragon Age. Yeah, I know...suggesting that someone play a video game in a writing forum is horrible. But it's a fantastic setting that has pretty hard undercurrents of racism running through both games, done fairly well. (And it's good to know whether you are or are not doing something fairly similar, as a portion of your audience likely will be familiar with the game.)

Mutive said:

I'd probably recommend the Lathe of Heaven first.

But definitely doing your research is good.

You might also consider playing Dragon Age. Yeah, I know...suggesting that someone play a video game in a writing forum is horrible. But it's a fantastic setting that has pretty hard undercurrents of racism running through both games, done fairly well. (And it's good to know whether you are or are not doing something fairly similar, as a portion of your audience likely will be familiar with the game.)

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I have played Dragon Age with almost every class, both genders and all difficulties and romance options. I felt the dialogue was tight, the plotting was wonderful...I consider my time playing writing research!

Who fears Death? by Nnendi Okorafor deals heavily with racism. She deals with racism in pretty much all her books. What it means to be biracial, etc. I think on that issue she did well, though I kind of feel mixed about the book itself.

Elves v. humans was dealt with by Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton in Elvenblood/Elvenbane. Not exactly well, but it has been done.

You might also want to read outside of fantasy in such stories as "Beloved" which overthrows the "Good House slave" POV. Reading the essay about "White Privilege" also shows institutionalized racism as well. Where the racism is ingrained into the every day and people in the higher position just take it for granted it is that way.

Those would show you that people writing about their own race are better suited to talk about the range, but hunting down stereotypes and understanding their origins isn't such a bad idea either.

If you need help with Asians, Ronald Takaki is a great start in the academic field. He pretty much pioneered race studies on Asians.

Also remember that racism isn't simply someone shouting profanities, it can be simple gestures in the every day. For example, a glare as you walk down a white neighborhood. Or people simply staring and calling you "exotic". A profanity doesn't have to be launched to call it racism.

Rachel Udin said:

Also remember that racism isn't simply someone shouting profanities, it can be simple gestures in the every day. For example, a glare as you walk down a white neighborhood. Or people simply staring and calling you "exotic". A profanity doesn't have to be launched to call it racism.

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When I was a kid in school, they did a test on me. The teacher gave me a list of american words to pronounce. 100 words. I said all of them right except for *one* word. Panama. I said it like pajama. They put me in ESL for a year....

JSDR--I can up you on that one. My White Jewish mother was convinced that when I first came that because I had spoken another language I was destined to be illiterate, even though I spoke fluent English by that time. So she put me in remedial classes. I outgrew it quickly.

However, she was still pretty convinced that I was going to end up being dumb because my first language was not English. So every time I asked her how to pronounce a word she said the most unhelpful words you can say to anyone trying to learn English, "Sound it out." *Cough* *rough* *through* *though* which is not intuitive at all.

So you can get racism/prejudice from your own family members too.

Though, I still get from idiots, talking fluent, unaccented, slight NE US English, "Oh, I thought you were an ESL student." --;; I have tons of things along that line too. My favorite though, is when they say, "Oh, you speak English good." and I get to correct them, "No, I speak it well." =P

Though, for me, my favorite story involves adoptism and racism rolled up into one. A friend of my Aunt and Uncle's came to their open house. (I have an awesome Aunt, BTW.) That person asked me, "So how do you know *name of Aunt and Uncle*" I said, "They are my Aunt and Uncle." She asked the semi-rude question, "How?" So I responded, "My Aunt's older brother is my dad." She frowned at me.

Later she went to my grandmother and my grandmother is not as good as my aunt at handling those kinds of things. She still calls "Asians" "Orientals." So I watched them though they didn't know I was watching and then the woman asked my grandmother, "How is she related to your family." My Grandmother being foot-in-mouth said, "She's adopted." And then the woman went "Oh" as if me not being biracial made it better and my grandmother went "Oh" at the same time (probably realizing the woman's prejudice), as if realizing that I'd kind of set them up to realize their own failures.

Those moments are satisfying (to me). Sometimes I set them up on purpose. That's because racism is soooo frustrating and sometimes it is simpler to show the person their own racism/prejudice rather than preach to them about it.

Man, Rachel, I feel ya on family struggles. I love how you said "My Aunt's older brother is my dad." Classic...

You mentioned it and I had to laugh in a sad way. Here's one for thought. My significant other still calls me "Oriental" sometimes. >.<

JSDR said:

When I was a kid in school, they did a test on me. The teacher gave me a list of american words to pronounce. 100 words. I said all of them right except for *one* word. Panama. I said it like pajama. They put me in ESL for a year....

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Rachel Udin said:

JSDR--I can up you on that one. My White Jewish mother was convinced that when I first came that because I had spoken another language I was destined to be illiterate, even though I spoke fluent English by that time. So she put me in remedial classes. I outgrew it quickly.

However, she was still pretty convinced that I was going to end up being dumb because my first language was not English. So every time I asked her how to pronounce a word she said the most unhelpful words you can say to anyone trying to learn English, "Sound it out." *Cough* *rough* *through* *though* which is not intuitive at all.

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I'll up both of you. When I was in elementary school we had a spelling list of words we needed to memorize for that week. I had no problem memorizing the order of letters and could look up the meaning of the words in the dictionary, but since my parents weren't fluent in English I had trouble finding someone to help me pronounce them correctly.

So... I went to my teacher and asked him how to pronounce the words. He made such a big deal of it that the entire class heard him asking me if this entire time I didn't even know why I had a list of words, like I didn't even know what spelling words were. I spent the rest of the year with kids speaking to me really slow and loud and giggling whenever we got a new spelling list. It didn't matter that I was one of the best spellers in the class.

After that incident I learned that there really is such a thing as a stupid question, so I was always really carefully before approaching any teacher with a question again. Amazing I learned anything at all.

Racism is one out of several themes in my current WIP, which has an Egyptian-inspired setting. One of my main characters is half-Hebrew and half-Egyptian, and another Egyptian character hates his guts for it because his own father was killed by Hebrews (I actually haven't written that part of the story yet, but it's in my mental outline). The biracial character wants more than anything else in the world to prove his greatness so that he won't be a victim of Egyptian racism anymore.