Hello. Sorry to introduce myself here with something that may make people uncomfortable, but I have been struggling with this a lot in my current WIP which has race and racism at its very core. http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8321289&postcount=20
I am writing about Reconstruction, and my main character and about half my cast are African-American. I am getting a good response and a lot of constructive criticism from PoC in my writing group, but I would like to expand my reach and I will eventually need some betas who could say the sorts of things people might not be comfortable saying face-to-face.
A secondary goal of this novel is to call bullsh!t on those who romanticize/apologize for the Confederacy. This is something that, as a white liberal living in the South, I've observed is still badly needed...!
I worry sometimes that I make my heroine too full of self-doubt from internalized racism and sexism (amplifying my personal struggles with sexism for a big part of this), but she pushes past this. While none of us now living could really understand slavery, I'm looking to the psychology of domestic violence and Stockholm Syndrome for clues.
I am focusing a lot on the personal evolution of my white male lead. The fact that my heroine decides to leave him at the end of the war takes him by surprise, as he's been "good to her" (he is not her master but she's been 'hired out' to him) but he comes to realize that was not enough...
I am writing about Reconstruction, and my main character and about half my cast are African-American. I am getting a good response and a lot of constructive criticism from PoC in my writing group, but I would like to expand my reach and I will eventually need some betas who could say the sorts of things people might not be comfortable saying face-to-face.
A secondary goal of this novel is to call bullsh!t on those who romanticize/apologize for the Confederacy. This is something that, as a white liberal living in the South, I've observed is still badly needed...!
I worry sometimes that I make my heroine too full of self-doubt from internalized racism and sexism (amplifying my personal struggles with sexism for a big part of this), but she pushes past this. While none of us now living could really understand slavery, I'm looking to the psychology of domestic violence and Stockholm Syndrome for clues.
I am focusing a lot on the personal evolution of my white male lead. The fact that my heroine decides to leave him at the end of the war takes him by surprise, as he's been "good to her" (he is not her master but she's been 'hired out' to him) but he comes to realize that was not enough...