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Has anyone here written anything with the MC as a different ethnic background and if so did they find that particularly difficult. I ask because I just finished a novel by one of my favorite authors and it was abysmal, primarily because they chose an African American MC and then, in my opinion, over stereotyped him. It just got me to wondering if that was a common problem.
Posts: 58 | Registered: May 2006
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I won't write from another real ethnicity. Ethnicity is not something one can learn because the differences that make someone "ethnic" are not absolute.
Other minority's yes, I'll write as a woman, as gay man, as a lesbian, as a cat, but I won't cross the line to a strong ethnic character.
Unles you count elves and dwarves, but I don't much like dwarves so I always write them as characters with annoying habits, like being short.
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I think it depends on why you want an ethnic pov. If your pov is a black accountant, I don't see why you'd treat him any differently than a white accountant as far as speech patterns and mannerisms go. Maybe the way people precieve him, but not how he percives himself. I doubt anyone goes through life commenting on their racial attributes. But if your pov is a black kid who has lived in the ghetto dealing drugs his entire life, he would be on the opposite end of the spectrum and require a bit of stereotyping unless you were making him something of a rose growing in a waste dump.
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I lived on an island in Alaska for years and more than half of the small population was Aleut natives. I have never tried a first person POV as one of them but I imagine I could probably try. I did do a few short stories with them as characters. I think that without actually having the experience among any given group it would be difficult to write from their point of view. The same would apply to any group i.e. a frenchman in france or a Thai in Thailand. An acurate protrayal does not depend on the group, it depends on knowledge - and not stereotypes - of the group.
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I've done it in short work, but never at novel length. I haven't done it much, but I haven't had any complaints yet. It's tough, often much the same as writing from the point of view of someone from a different culture (really, that's how it works anyhow -- the skin color/genetic differences seem strongly overshadowed by environmental/culteral differences.)
[This message has been edited by Minister (edited June 22, 2006).]
posted
The MC in my novel is black, and I'm not; and there's another prominent black character. IMHO the challenges are to get the slang right. For the other character, no big problem; he doesn't use slang. I'm from the South, and I *think* I can handle the black slang.
To me, it's about language. Also a little about other aspects of culture, like food or music, but mostly language.
[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited June 22, 2006).]
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Actually bringing up Jane Austen brings up a good point. Writing ethnic characters is no different than writing any character who moves in a social sphere that you were not raised in. You can connect to their emotions because those are a basic part of being human, but how those are expressed and what seems inappropriate to a give person will vary wildly based on where, when and how they were raised.
I mean saying "I'm writing a story about a black person" and thinking that skin tone is the most important thing is like saying "I'm writing a story about a white person." A white person raised in the South in 1950 will be totally different from a white person raised in 1880 in France.
In either case, you have to research the speech, history and customs of the society the person comes from and lives in.
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If what you're saying is true, I'll have to kill off all my WASP MC's. I think the real difficulty is writing about a minority if you're part of the majority. If you've lived or worked with the group you're trying to represent, you shouldn't have that big of a problem. I don't think the issue is ethnicity though. It's even harder to write about someone from you're same ethnic group if they have a different background. Partly because you don't characterize the guy immediately buy skin-color, but also because you'd think the differences would be minimal, and they are deffinitively not.
Posts: 507 | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
I think this topic has strayed into a pretty classic battleground for race and ethnicities studies no matter what partiuclar discipline is doing the work.
The point that Wbriggs brought up about language is a valid one but not the entire one nor is the point brought up by several others about having experience/or knowledge of said group the point in entireity.
Rather what I think is the issue is being empathetic as a writer. Quite often I find that writers who are empathetic will generally have a better reader response to their characters regardless of race or ethincity. I use the word empathy rather than sympathy because the one indicates feeling towards while the other implies a first hand knowledge of a like experience.
I've listed below a few of the classic lines in race/gender discussions that I use to teach these issues in 101 soc. Now I realize the following statements are like as not to be shocking to those who've not been through this exercise before but it doesn bear repeating for the purpose of this discussion.
Men don't know what its like to be a woman White people don't know what its like to be "colored" Rich/Middle Class don't really know what its like to be Poor
There are countless other derivations of this I could use as examples but the issue remains that while true sympathy/understanding cannot be had but empathy for the experience may be found in abundance.
So to the budding writer what has to be learned is to not just write what your character would do, as this makes it a rather dry and lifeless text rather what a writer should to is to first imagine the life, imagine all the loves, hates, fears and cares this character has and use these to craft a subtle but flowing narrative frame that gives the character a sense of "reality"
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The difference isn't just speech and food. That's the Disney version. The difference is what we talk [iabout[/i], and our cultural narratives which inform that, for better and worse. We can even take Christianity for example. The devotion and rebellion to law and authority of the church is colored by so many years of devotion and rebellion to the toil on earth in service to a plantation Lord. I think that we all call upon cultural narratives, conciously and unconciously, in every human decision we make. Unless you take these narratives seriously, and the disparate ones between different ethinicity, it's going to be poor fiction.
Thomas Friedman, Clinton, and to some extent Bush think that if we scrub them hard enough, everyone in the entire world is at their heart, a plucky white corn-fed judeo-christian capitalist from Indiana, and the only difference is food and language. I don't know if that is true.
[This message has been edited by Tanglier (edited June 24, 2006).]
quote:a plucky white corn-fed judeo-christian capitalist from Indiana
, even language and food aside
Seriously: I am entirely in agreement regarding the differences. Being of a different background (whether ethnicity, wealth, whatever) means you'll have a different mindset, different preoccupations, different reactions to events, different beliefs... Language plays a part (not the least because its vocabulary and structures reveal quite a lot about the way of thinking of the people who speak that particular language) but it's not the only factor.
In fact, insofar as most dialogue in fiction can be considered a translation, language can end up being pretty minor. Speech patterns maybe, but that's kind of showy and a bit too uncomfortably shallow for me. Sure, speech will provide local colour, but what you really need when painting a different culture is three-dimensionality, and not just a coat of paint.
We're all human in here, but that doesn't mean we think the same. (edited because I messed up with my tags once again)
[This message has been edited by Silver3 (edited June 24, 2006).]
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Actually, I've *seen* the Disney version, and that isn't it.
But a black man who grew up poor in the South and lives in the city now, drives a car, watches Monday Night Football, and goes to church isn't wildly different from a white man who grew up poor in the South and lives in the city now, drives a car, watches Monday Night Football, and goes to church. Their concerns will be car trouble and work and family, not avoiding witches or spreading the Revolution; when they get sick, they'll want the ER rather than the shaman; their ambitions will be about paying the bills or being admired, not about building an extension for a concubine or getting a piece of the Emporer's toilet paper (Japan, 50 years ago, I'm serious). Who they vote for and how often they've been sneered at matters, but not as much as differences with other societies. Really: 500 years ago where I live, there were people who had never heard of books, science, cars, Jesus Christ, cities, money, Communism, or Pokemon, and would consider condemnation of Abu Ghraib to be incomprehensible rather than obvious -- as in, so they tortured their captives, but . . . how *else* can those captives show their bravery? Don't you have any respect for your enemies at all?
Or there's the Cargo Cult people.
Or there's the Maoris before European contact -- where war was glorious and cannibalism was a mark of pride.
Compared to that, differences between American citizens are minor. Every time I try to get specific about them, I see that they're pretty small compared to the differences between me and a Pakistani, or an Aztec, or even a modern Japanese, for that matter.
posted
Hum, I probably misunderstood "ethnicity" here...
You're right, wbriggs, it depends. From my experience of the Vietnamese diaspora in France, though, different ethnicities still don't quite think the same as other people, and don't quite have the same values.
If I may draw on somewhat personal stuff, my mother's (Vietnamese) side of the family sets a high score on academic success, but they couldn't care less about which religion I practise. My father's (French, and decidedly Catholic) side of the family has a lot less humour on the latter point. And on the former...I have many paternal uncles who failed high school, and my father's family doesn't care as much, so long as they make a living (my mother's family would have ostracised them).
It's probably way more subtle than the difference between me and the Aztecs, granted, but it's there. And it's damn hard to pinpoint (I sat there for about five minutes trying to put it into words and still haven't succeeded quite to my satisfaction. I just *know* my mother's family doesn't think like my father's, and that my father's family has many common points with people of the same French, Catholic background, and a lot fewer with those Asians I know).
But yes, there are also many common preoccupations that would come merely from being part of the same society (such as work and family). Depending on the educations, though, their outlook on work and family might well be quite different. (but also up to individuals, so there's that too).
I suppose the best way to write different ethnicities is to research as accurately as you can, and then have someone from that ethnicity re-read the ms. looking for glaring mistakes.
posted
I'm Native American, and I believe I can honestly say, as a race, our humor is different, our thought patterns, our perceptions of life in general varies from those of other races.
Take an indigenous person, like me for instance. If a white person makes me angry, I am likely to be much more angry at him or her than if another native p*ssed me off, and it could be for the exact same thing. The difference is that the native (Black, Asian, whatever) is most likely going to share the profound sense of grief all indigenous people carry when they are dispossessed and treated as, best scenario--tourist curiousities, or as "other," sub-human. I'm not talking about the 1600's or the even the 1900's. I'm talking about today. Right now. I'm not making this up, People, nor am I trying to "lay a guilt-trip" on anyone. It's just the way it is. Do you see how this would affect our viewpoints?
I believe Native people have a deeper connection to family, perhaps because we haven't been exactly the richest people on the planet and so have come to depend on each other. I also believe we have great respect for our responsibilities to the circle of life. This is not to say white people don't share any of these feelings. But as a people, as a whole, I suspect the indigenous nations have a more ingrained sense of these connections.
I'm sure there are aspects of white culture that I will never understand. So why should native culture be any different? In writing though, using a character with an Oneida background would, I think, flatter me more than aggravate me. As long as the character had depth and was not used as either a symbol or a stereotype. The same as any well-depicted character, in other words. So notice speech patterns, body language (Menominee Indians like to point with their lips ,) and attitudes, the same as with any character. Just don't think, well I imagine they'd be like this, because a lot of all of our perceptions come from the boob tube and Hollywood. And a lot of them, don't know nothin'.
I hope I've helped somewhat. Keep on writing, and explore those characters. Good characters always seem to have good stories
quote:Try writing a POV character who isn't even your species. Then try selling the story to members of that species rather than your own
That's exactly what I'm (trying) to do in my sci-fi novelette. The MC is an alien that crash lands on Earth. It's hard to do, mainly because I find myself having to describe things without saying the name of the thing I'm describing. For example, I'm talking about a tree, but on the MC's home planet, there are no trees. I have to describe how there is a trunk and branches and leaves but since there are no trees and therefore no trunks or branches or leaves, I have to be very precise in my description. It's good practice if nothing else and helps me to see the world through new eyes.
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I have a humerous perspective on a similar issue. I'm a parapelgic. I don't consider myself different from other people but I do have to admit that I probably think about things that non-diabled people don't think about, such as stairs going into a building, someone parking too close to my car door (which means no getting back into my car until that person moves), or that steep inclines are bad (or declines even).
I think sometimes people, including the ones who've got the inside track, are so tuned into the politically correct or "right" way about writing about someones race/diability/etc., they reverse-steriotype someone or themselves. I had first hand experience with this in another online writing group who accused me of being unrealistic and writing about something disabled peopled "didn't do" because I wrote about my MC rolling her chair across some grass. They actually chided me for not doing enough "research" about my character's disability and they knew better than I did because they had a friend in a wheelchair. I had secret enjoyment in emailing the person directly telling them that I had first hand experience in rolling a wheelchair over grass, because of my own disability. My point is that we need to be careful about worrying too much about what someone is doing "right" with a character and focusing more on that character's individuality.
[This message has been edited by Whitney (edited June 25, 2006).]
[This message has been edited by Whitney (edited June 25, 2006).]
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Okay I understand what is being said, but I’m not convinced and here is why: My husband’s family is originally from the Indian sub-continent (being specific because I have found that saying Indian in the past leads to confusion) and even after eight years of marriage we still can not understand some of the subtle as well as the profound differences in our families. I.E. mine is very private with stiff boundaries, even with in the family. His is very much into everyone’s business and are offended if you don’t graciously offer any tidbit of information requested. To head off any argument as to if this is truly an ethnic difference, it is. It stems from the tradition of white families to move away from their birth families and start fresh with their married family as a new entity while Indian’s don’t. The wife moves in into her husband’s family house and is absorbed into the existing dynamics. Anyway my husband and I are empathetic enough to respect the differences, but we still can’t always understand where the other’s family is coming from. So here is where all this is going, I know what my father-in-law would do in any given situation, but often don’t know why, and that’s the key to any good story, especially if it is the MC that is from the differing ethnic background. You have to be able to answer the why and I don’t know if that is entirely possible. Maybe that is why authors fall back on the overwhelming stereotyping, because they are showing what the character is doing without knowing why.
Posts: 58 | Registered: May 2006
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posted
This is great stuff. That stuff about the difference in the French Catholic side and the Vietnamese side. I got a little of such unexpected cultural conflict in Hawaii. A woman renting apartments to students used year-long leases, because she thought anybody who transferred between schools was an unreputable bum. In another culture (Deep South), my grandfather was convinced that every sort of work you might do that wasn't farming, was sissy. A female engineer friend of mine went to Korea. Every company function she went to, she didn't fit in, because she wasn't an engineer's wife and none of the other engineers were she's.
Turtle Goddess, I may ask to run something by you eventually! My WIP has Indians: some 1520's Indians; one modern-day Indian who was raised as white and knows Indian culture from the outside; and a minor character off the rez. The one off the rez is the one I'm most afraid of screwing up with, since I know what it's like to be raised white and nobody here knows what it's like to live in the 1520's!
I'm also relieved you'd be more flattered than annoyed at an attempt. I'm hedging my bets by writing about a fictitious tribe. Still, I've had some big errors corrected by an Indian friend, things about the 1520's versions.
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I've had two opportunities to host teenagers in a foreign exchange program, one from Kazhakstan and the other from Slovakia. Tatiana, from Slovakia, was 16 at the time... the same age as my daughter. It amazed me how much the behavior was simply about being 16, and how little of it had to do with being from a different culture. Sure, there were differences... but at age 16 (nearly) ALL girls are thinking of boys....
Posts: 2026 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:I know what my father-in-law would do in any given situation, but often don’t know why, and that’s the key to any good story, especially if it is the MC that is from the differing ethnic background. You have to be able to answer the why and I don’t know if that is entirely possible. Maybe that is why authors fall back on the overwhelming stereotyping, because they are showing what the character is doing without knowing why.
Neoindra makes a very important point here.
The ability to show motivation is one of the greatest strengths of written fiction, and one of the major reasons why people who like to read fiction enjoy it so much. If you want such readers to read your fiction, it helps if you can be as clear as possible about your characters' motivations.
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,) and attitudes, the same as with any character. Just don't think, well I imagine they'd be like this, because a lot of all of our perceptions come from the boob tube and Hollywood. And a lot of them, don't know nothin'.
