I've never actually talked to anyone about how conflicted this story makes me feel, but I thought I would try here first. The novel is written, so this story is pretty much set -- at least until the publisher that has it right now rejects it.
The protagonist is Indian. Taken from her home, she's raised as a slave in Sweden. Much of the story revolves around her internal distance from the Swedish narrative. Norse mythology is the paint flaking off at the heart of the tale; her mental state that she's too dark to be allowed inside Valhalla, no matter how many of the motions she goes through. She's got one good friend, a highly stylized Swedish guy that adheres to the white male ideal. There's kinship in the violence of their times, but she knows that he knows, and he knows how different they are. The tension in their relationship isn't in the male/female dynamic, but that they're no longer children who can ignore the pressures of a homogeneous society that only one of them identifies with. Enter aliens. A race so genetically different from one another that they're practically engineering a new subspecies every generation, and they're dark skinned. There are other worlds out there, things she's never even dreamed possible. Towering above them all, gods who are look a little more like her. Language flows in different ways, and she finds a thread that can lead her back to the people that birthed her.
That thread is a dead end. She's just as distant from India as she is from Sweden. She can speak and identify the trends of ancient Norse and this new alien culture, but her interest in India feels like a daydream. She never even visits.
My conflict is two-sided, I think. The first being that I'm personally mixed. I fall squarely into that definitely-not-white, but way-too-pale-to-be-a-real-Mexican garbage. I can't speak Spanish. My mother associates all things Mexico with the death of her mother, so it's better to say that we were essentially barred from learning too much. While I grew up rolling out tortillas and eating tamales, these activities were never associated with a cultural identity that Mexican-Mexicans saw as good enough. I'm the antithesis of religious, yet many of my stories heavily feature adoring Catholics (and they are not villains). In direct contrast to that, I was just Mexican enough to be called all manner of racial slurs by my father: a man who was smart enough to marry two different women of a race he loathes. I'm used to hate on both sides.
My character, however, is distinctly Indian; she'd share skeletal structure and hair texture. She'd be the right shade of purple in the crook of her arms and back of her knees as everyone else walking down the streets of Southern India. I start questioning myself here.
Have I gone down the wrong path? I struggle with the idea that I may have set up a story where the reader thinks the ending will be 'going home', only to realize far too late that there is no home. Does this fall under setting up a premise and then pulling the rug out from under them? I wanted to be pragmatic, but I'm driving myself crazy wondering if I've made a character that is just too offensive to the current sociopolitical narrative. I may not be able to speak Spanish, but I understand being spit on for it and I wonder if it's okay to write a story where connecting with your own heritage doesn't spin a happily ever after.
Edit: Removed the term 'black' and clarified intentions. For posterity, the aliens were originally described as 'black' in the opening post. Also clarified the protag's origins.
The protagonist is Indian. Taken from her home, she's raised as a slave in Sweden. Much of the story revolves around her internal distance from the Swedish narrative. Norse mythology is the paint flaking off at the heart of the tale; her mental state that she's too dark to be allowed inside Valhalla, no matter how many of the motions she goes through. She's got one good friend, a highly stylized Swedish guy that adheres to the white male ideal. There's kinship in the violence of their times, but she knows that he knows, and he knows how different they are. The tension in their relationship isn't in the male/female dynamic, but that they're no longer children who can ignore the pressures of a homogeneous society that only one of them identifies with. Enter aliens. A race so genetically different from one another that they're practically engineering a new subspecies every generation, and they're dark skinned. There are other worlds out there, things she's never even dreamed possible. Towering above them all, gods who are look a little more like her. Language flows in different ways, and she finds a thread that can lead her back to the people that birthed her.
That thread is a dead end. She's just as distant from India as she is from Sweden. She can speak and identify the trends of ancient Norse and this new alien culture, but her interest in India feels like a daydream. She never even visits.
My conflict is two-sided, I think. The first being that I'm personally mixed. I fall squarely into that definitely-not-white, but way-too-pale-to-be-a-real-Mexican garbage. I can't speak Spanish. My mother associates all things Mexico with the death of her mother, so it's better to say that we were essentially barred from learning too much. While I grew up rolling out tortillas and eating tamales, these activities were never associated with a cultural identity that Mexican-Mexicans saw as good enough. I'm the antithesis of religious, yet many of my stories heavily feature adoring Catholics (and they are not villains). In direct contrast to that, I was just Mexican enough to be called all manner of racial slurs by my father: a man who was smart enough to marry two different women of a race he loathes. I'm used to hate on both sides.
My character, however, is distinctly Indian; she'd share skeletal structure and hair texture. She'd be the right shade of purple in the crook of her arms and back of her knees as everyone else walking down the streets of Southern India. I start questioning myself here.
Have I gone down the wrong path? I struggle with the idea that I may have set up a story where the reader thinks the ending will be 'going home', only to realize far too late that there is no home. Does this fall under setting up a premise and then pulling the rug out from under them? I wanted to be pragmatic, but I'm driving myself crazy wondering if I've made a character that is just too offensive to the current sociopolitical narrative. I may not be able to speak Spanish, but I understand being spit on for it and I wonder if it's okay to write a story where connecting with your own heritage doesn't spin a happily ever after.
Edit: Removed the term 'black' and clarified intentions. For posterity, the aliens were originally described as 'black' in the opening post. Also clarified the protag's origins.
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