Comments on Mitali's Fire Escape: Ten Tips On Writing Race in Novels

Wow, this post is very helpful and very very true....

2012-01-15T16:33:27.146-05:00

Wow, this post is very helpful and very very true. Thank you so much for writing it.

I found this post via your most excellent new essa...

2010-07-24T09:09:13.314-04:00

I found this post via your most excellent new essay in Hunger Mountain, re: book covers. Great discussion. I especially appreciated this point and the specifics from all the comments::

Challenge apartheid.
Don't let anybody inform you that you can't venture outside your own ethnic self-identification as you create characters.

Very helpful. I will give it a go! Thanks! Jackie...

2009-05-19T16:15:00.000-04:00

Very helpful. I will give it a go! Thanks! Jackie

Hi Jackie, Thanks for stopping by. My only sugges...

2009-04-24T15:48:00.000-04:00

Hi Jackie,

Thanks for stopping by. My only suggestion would be to have a character describe her through dialogue instead of using your narrative voice, unless it's a first person voice. Then just stay true to how that character would see/describe your protagonist.

Hope that's helpful, and congratulations on your writing.

Mitali

Hi! Thanks for a wonderful discussion! I found th...

2009-04-24T13:58:00.000-04:00

Hi!

Thanks for a wonderful discussion! I found this on the internet because I'm having a really hard time describing a character who has a white West Texas Irish mother and a black Nigerian (Yoruba) father. The problem is that the character's ethnicity---how she feels about it and how others react to it---is central to my novel. I can't get away with not describing the character's facial features. My character's ethnicity is important precisely because in the novel, the white characters like her "exotic" good looks and the ambiguity of her ethnicity. In other words, she's black enough to fascinate, but not black enough to scare or intimidate. I just don't know how to convey this in terms of facial features in a way that doesn't fall into cliches.

Any advice????

I agree that authors should probably know and imag...

2008-10-31T12:34:00.000-04:00

I agree that authors should probably know and imagine our characters' ethnicities, but I'm asking us to develop the discipline of asking ourselves why and how we're informing our readers about the knowledge we have in our heads about the characters -- especially perhaps when it comes to ethnicity given the strange way our culture processes that attribute.

Hi Mitali -- I don't think I meant that this is a ...

2008-10-29T12:09:00.000-04:00

Hi Mitali -- I don't think I meant that this is a hard and fast rule in which every single last character's ethnic background is described. I can see how that might not be necessary and could be irrelevant for secondary or walk-on characters. But for me, I just can't imagine writing a primary character without knowing and describing her racial background (but not necessarily by using the terms "black" or "Asian"). That is such a huge element of the character that informs everything from what she eats to how she addresses her parents. How could it be left out? I'm sure it's different for different writers, but that's the way it is for me. :) Again, very interesting discussion!

Malinda, thanks for your comment. Yes, it's great ...

2008-10-28T14:39:00.000-04:00

Malinda, thanks for your comment. Yes, it's great when the reader gets to be in charge of casting a fantasy. I used to and still enjoy doing that.

But in contemporary fiction, what if my biracial reader is hurtling through my story almost unconsciously picturing my protagonist as biracial in the back of her imagination, but then I as an author describe a "biracial" secondary character. All of a sudden, the reader realizes that the protagonist can't be biracial.

Instead of the story buzzing along directed by the reader's imagination, obeying a mandate to ALWAYS describe race can end up jarring the reader, and sometimes feels like the author asserting control.

OF COURSE, the story and the characters decide when it's necessary. But even in contemporary fiction, I don't think it always is.

This has been such an interesting discussion to re...

2008-10-28T12:35:00.000-04:00

This has been such an interesting discussion to read. I realize you're talking generally about real world-based fiction, but because I'm writing a fantasy novel in which I imagined my characters as biracial (but didn't describe them as such), it struck me that rules are different for fantasy. For fantasy, I totally believe in rule #3, but for reality-based fiction, I think it's necessary to describe race. My blog post about it is here: http://malindalo.com/blog/2008/10/28/writing-about-race-in-fantasy-novels/

Hi Katia,

#10 is mainly because food has be...

2008-10-28T11:53:00.000-04:00

Hi Katia,

#10 is mainly because food has been so overdone in ethnic description that it almost always sounds cliche. The point being that we're writers, so it's time for some creative new linguistic play.

Mitali

Hello Mitali,
Chiming in from India, where the...

2008-10-28T11:40:00.000-04:00

Hello Mitali,
Chiming in from India, where the Diwali celebrations are deafening :) I greatly enjoyed this discussion, even though I did wonder about your point number 10, and the apparent ban on food metaphors to describe skin color (which I personally see as loving and positive). But then, I remembered that the whole discussion is meant in the context of the third person narrator's point of view in a novel. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Not necessarily. When I set my book in Bangladesh,...

2008-10-26T15:14:00.000-04:00

Not necessarily. When I set my book in Bangladesh, I didn't use "bengali" as an ethnic label every time I described a character. In Coe Booth's KENDRA, the author never uses ethnic or racial labels but we get that information anyway. Any author would only use "white" or "black" as labels only if character of the narrative voice demanded those words to be used -- so once again, it doesn't depend on the ethnicity of the author.

"The consensus is that in a third-person narrative...

2008-10-26T11:28:00.000-04:00

"The consensus is that in a third-person narrative voice it's best to avoid socially-constructed race words like African-American, Asian-American, etc. to describe only the characters who aren't of European descent. And North American authors conventionally don't use "European-American" or white because to label every character's race gets tedious. So don't use any such labels at all."

Doe you mean European American authors? I think this works very differently in narratives not centered on white characters.

I wonder: do readers often look fo...

2008-10-25T13:00:00.000-04:00

I wonder: do readers often look for the race or ethnicity of characters when reading a novel? In other words, do we as readers try to determine race and ethnicity to help us better picture the story in our own heads?

Mitali, I suspect many people choose to describe e...

2008-10-25T12:56:00.000-04:00

Mitali, I suspect many people choose to describe ethnicity because of your point #2 above: "First, why are you describing the ethnicity of your characters? Don't do it if your honest answer is 'I want to show how open-minded I am' or 'I want to move the world towards a better day.'"

I think many writers would like to be thought of as "culturally-aware." It's a noble sentiment, but perhaps not workable when writing literature. However, race and ethnicity are still big factors when it comes to identity, politics, and just everyday life happenings, so mentioning race and ethnicity will often be a necessary component in a story.

Thanks for this -- you've got some great points fo...

2008-10-25T12:29:00.000-04:00

Thanks for this -- you've got some great points for helping shape character. I'm a believer in the #3 philosophy. While her characters were obviously English, Jane Austen rarely described any of them as more than "handsome" or "pretty" or "plain." The characteristics of their personalities define them most strongly. In doing that, she allowed us each to imagine our own, private, Mr. Darcy. Mmm.

Yes, I agree. Even when omniscient, seems to me y...

2008-10-25T11:09:00.000-04:00

Yes, I agree. Even when omniscient, seems to me your narrator's (and characters') viewpoints would dictate ethnic descriptions. Skin color, for instance, may be simple description for one character but emotionally charged for another. And not even noticeable for a third.

I remember reading a novel by an African writer years ago and being struck by the fact that, in a hot setting, the temperature of a woman's skin was described lovingly as "cool," when a chilly Northerner like myself would get a more positive vibe from "warm" skin.

Your decision about how to describe your character...

2008-10-25T09:31:00.000-04:00

Your decision about how to describe your characters' appearances should have little to do with YOUR race or location as the author, and everything to do with the story and the character. But be careful about your own prejudices creeping in and taking over. Many of the most lethal ones are latent.

You underline the points about letting the charact...

2008-10-25T09:28:00.000-04:00

You underline the points about letting the characters and the story lead the way. If you're writing from your progatonist's point of view, like your mentee, he would certainly use the racial and ethnic labels appropriate to him.

But in an omniscient narrator's voice, unless you're willing to say "black person" AND "white person" every time someone enters the scene, you'll have to be more creative to describe ethnicity when your story and characters and setting require it.

2008-10-25T09:27:00.000-04:00

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I was a writing mentor for a fourteen-year-old her...

2008-10-25T08:47:00.000-04:00

I was a writing mentor for a fourteen-year-old here in lily-white Maine who wrote a story about a kid from a predominately African-American neighborhood. Since the story was entirely from his protagonist's point of view, white people were the only ones whose race got defined. We figured that was the only racial distinction the protagonist would notice.

Seems to me the racial markers have to be up to your protagonist. If they matter to him/her, then they matter. If not, they don't.

Great discussion and great list of tips. I asked ...

2008-10-24T20:21:00.000-04:00

Great discussion and great list of tips. I asked a writer friend about this once, and he said that describing a character's ethnicity shouldn't be that big of a deal---if we can describe the color of a flower or a car or a dress, why not mention the color of someone's skin or certain facial features? It’s totally natural to notice what a person looks like. If we go out of our way to avoid describing something that even the most open-minded person notices---a person’s ethnicity---are we just trying very hard to be PC? I’m not saying I agree or disagree with my friend; I'm just throwing these questions out there to contribute to this interesting discussion!

When it comes to describing cultures, specific is ...

2008-10-24T15:32:00.000-04:00

When it comes to describing cultures, specific is always better than general. And more interesting, too. A story set "somewhere in Africa" won't match the authenticity of a book set in a particular village in Mali, for example. Thanks for that point, Cyn.

Thank you, Mitali, for yet another thoughtful post...

2008-10-24T15:28:00.000-04:00

Thank you, Mitali, for yet another thoughtful post. It reinforces your global point, I think, that I'd urge writers to use specific tribal affiliations rather than Native American or American Indian generally--so long as that information is available/applicable to the narrator POV. It also discourages defaulting to Hollywood stereotypes or "fungible" Indians, who make little to no sense to insider readers.

Mitali, as always you inspire me to my own thought...

2008-10-24T12:17:00.000-04:00

Mitali, as always you inspire me to my own thoughtful blogging and I think it's really cool that this conversation has spawned such wide-ranging thought! I'm grateful that you take the time to be coherent and informative on the behalf of the random writing public when you have all of your own stuff to do, too. Thanks.