Tag: diversity

Beyond Orcs and Elves: a prelude

- Stacy 1 Comment

Now that NESCBWI is over, I will be posting parts of my talk, “Beyond Orcs and Elves: Diversity in Fantasy & Science Fiction for Young Readers” here on my blog. I will be breaking it up over the course of several posts—it was designed as a 40-minute–to–hour-long talk, and it’s just too long for one post. Not to mention I have slides I’ll be putting up (someone suggested SlideShare? I’ll have to check it out once I have time to sit down with it) which need to be incorporated somehow.

I haven’t had time, though, to sit down and split up the talk and figure out where the most natural breaks are. I went straight from a busy week last week to a VERY full weekend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (13 critiques and two presentations over the course of three days) to back to work on Monday, which has left me a little shell-shocked, and all I want to do now outside of work is to sleep. You know it’s bad when you can’t even concentrate on the Sarah Jane Adventures even though you’ve been looking forward to watching the last season!

My evening is full tonight, so it will be at least tomorrow night, if not sometime on Thursday (I’m taking the day off to be home for the delivery of my new couch, which I’m excited about) before the first post of the talk is organized. So keep an eye out until then.

Workshop and conference miscellanea, other events

- Stacy 5 Comments
  • Just got invited last minute to join a panel at ASJA on Saturday on “Perfecting Your Elevator Pitch” from 11 a.m. to noon this Saturday, April 30, at the Roosevelt Hotel in NYC. I believe it’s open to the public (not sure if there’s a cost) so if you’re going, see you there.
  • Only a few weeks away from the NESCBWI conference in Fitchburg, MA, which I believe sold out, but if you were one of the lucky ones who got a ticket, I’m looking forward to doing a workshop on worldbuilding and a talk on diversity in fantasy in science fiction. I’ve given “Beyond Orcs and Elves” before, in California and in Utah, so this will be my East Coast version of it, and then after for those who didn’t make it to any of those events I plan on sharing at least parts of it on the blog here.
  • how not to talk down to your YA audienceIf you were to be in my worldbuilding workshop, what would you want to hear about? What kind of handouts would you find useful? I’ve done this workshop before, but it’s been a while and I’m working on updating it, so feel free to jot down a wish list. This is another topic that I’ve been meaning to blog more about, as well, so once the presentation/workshop is over I plan to share at least parts of it here.
  • While I’m in Fitchburg, I’m sad to say, I’m going to miss the Diversity in YA Tour stop in New York. Of COURSE all the cool things are happening on the same weekend! But that doesn’t mean that YOU have to miss out on it. They start the weekend after next with San Francisco, where friends Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo, and J.A. Yang will be signing (Cindy and Malinda are the masterminds behind the whole thing and will be at every stop), as well as Gene Luen Yang, who I don’t know personally but you might have heard about through, I don’t know, his National Book Award nomination for American Born Chinese or the book winning the Printz and the Eisner. Then they’ll be in Austin, where they’re joined by a large contingency of authors including Lee & Low author Guadalupe Garcia McCall, whose debut Under the Mesquite comes out soon. And if you’ve read and loved Bleeding Violet as I did and are in the Austin area, Dia Reeves will be there, too, as well as several other notable authors. In Chicago, they’ll be joined by Nnedi Okorafor, among others. In Boston, you’ve got Holly Black, Francisco X. Stork . . . the list is getting too long. Just go to the tour page and look at all the cool people who will be at each stop! I will wave in Cindy and Malinda’s general direction as we pass, three ships in the night (or day as the case may be), me on the way to Massachusetts from New York City and them the other way around.
  • Then later this month is BEA. I’m looking forward to seeing a lot of author friends in town. If you’re coming in town for BEA, drop me a line.
  • Before BEA is School Library Journal’s Day of Dialogue, which sounds like it’ll be a great event—Katherine Paterson, discussions on diversity, apps, debut authors. Not a bad price for SLJ subscribers, too.

May will be a busy month, and then in June all of publishing will be at ALA (I don’t believe I’ll be going to it myself this year, but Lee & Low will have a booth), then later in the year is WorldCon in Reno, which I wish I could attend but likely won’t be able to shoehorn in between all my work, hopefully a trip home at some point in the summer, and Girls’ Camp for the girls in my church, which I’m chaperoning this year. I kind of feel like saying all this stuff out loud is making the summer feel almost over, the way that when I work on books for a year or more in advance I kind of feel like I’m living in the future. But you live in the present, so you should schedule a few of these events in!

Resources for writers: Links for reflecting on white privilege and writing the Other

- Stacy 1 Comment

I promised the writers of the Ventura/Santa Barbara SCBWI that I’d post the list of resources I flashed at them at the end of my talk so they’d be able to actually reference them. These should also have been emailed out to the local listservs, but for those who aren’t on those listservs, and I’m sure this list will be of use for anyone thinking about writing someone who is, as Ursula Le Guin says, “a being who is different from yourself. This being can be different from you in its sex; or in its annual income; or in its way of speaking and dressing and doing things; or in the color of its skin, or the number of its legs and heads.” I can’t help but add for that last item: this is speculative fiction we’re talking about, after all. (That’s from her book mentioned below, The Language of the Night, in the essay “American SF and the Other”—a GREAT read for anyone thinking about these issues.)

Nisi Shawl’s Writing the Other—both a workshop and a book
“Appropriate Cultural Appropriation” by Nisi Shawl
“Transracial Writing for the Sincere” by Nisi Shawl
Le Guin, Ursula K. “American SF and the Other,” The Language of the Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1979/1989. (Out of print—your best bet is your local library/interlibrary loan or finding it online used.)
Le Guin, Ursula K. “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?” The Language of the Night. New York: HarperCollins, 1979/1989.
“Being Poor” by John Scalzi
“Things I Don’t Have to Think about Today” by John Scalzi  paired with his next post on narrative usurpation, covering why he wrote the previous post

What we’re looking for at Tu: Mystery

- Stacy 1 Comment

For the first season, Tu Books focused on science fiction and fantasy. Now that Fall 2011 is acquired and in the midst of editing and production, we’re opening up our focus on genre fiction to include mysteries for children and young adults. Remember, we’re still looking for main characters of color, but the setting could be anywhere—or any when—in the world.

As always, please refer to our submission guidelines for details.

Toph: “Supercrip” stereotype or well-rounded disabled character?

- Stacy 9 Comments

I just today read this post on disabled people (or, if you prefer, people who happen to be disabled)—particularly regarding creation of characters—over at the Rejectionist, so being a little late and interested in continuing the discussion focusing on a specific character, I am turning my potential comment into a blog post instead.

Rachel notes that the “Supercrip” character stereotype is “the most pervasive and most cherished in the Able-bodied Narrative.” What was that relatively recent book made into a movie in which a kid with spina bifida (or was it cerebral palsy?) joins up with his able-bodied friend/nemesis with a mental disability to imagine that they’re both superheroes, but ends up with at least one if not both dead because they get beat up? (Forgive me if I mangled that plot—I got so annoyed by the emotional manipulation that I stopped paying attention; I must have been watching it in a location where I couldn’t just turn it off, like at a relative’s house or something.)  Then there’s A Beautiful Mind, which I can’t judge well because I refused to see it because it appeared to portray a schizophrenic curing himself—another trope Rachel discusses, looking for the cure. (My mother is schizophrenic. Sorry, it’s not curable.) It isn’t enough that the guy is a mathematician who happens to have schizophrenia. No, it makes him one of the best mathematicians in the world! It’s all so inspiring! (gag) Tell me if I’m wrong, because like I said, I avoided it it due to perceived possible emotional manipulation.

As Rachel says,

Supercrip is the “inspiring” and “amazing” disabled person who has “suffered” and “overcome” the “terrible limitations” of disability. Bitch magazine explains it thus:

Supercrip provides a way for non-disabled folks to be “inspired” by persons with disabilities without actually questioning—or making changes to—how persons with disabilities are treated in society…. Supercrip cannot just be human; she or he must be superhuman and surpass not only her/his disability, but the realms of “normal” human achievement. Supercrip allows some non-disabled folks to feel better about themselves; this is quite evident when it comes to statements like, “What an inspiration!”

In fiction, particularly fantasy, the Supercrip trope is interpreted in its literal sense—the disabled superhero, a la Daredevil, a blind man with super-sensitive hearing and touch that completely negated the effects his blindness and therefore of his experience as a blind man. It is a form of fixing and normalizes disability by rendering actual conflicts and difficulties of being disabled as irrelevant.

Which makes me wonder where Toph in Avatar: The Last Airbender fits in to this paradigm.  I don’t see Toph in the same way that I see those emotionally manipulative stories. Toph may be “making up” for her blindness via Earthbending, yet it’s not really the same thing … is it? Sure, she can “see” with her feet, but it’s a much different kind of seeing. She still can’t do some things her companions can, like read. (Because, duh, she’s blind, as she so matter-of-factly reminds them.) Being blind is simply a part of who she is as a well-rounded character. She’s not *more* awesome than everyone else (though she’s still VERY awesome)—she’s just who she is, a smart, capable girl who happens to be one of the best Earthbenders in the world (hence, my wondering: stereotype?), who discovers metalbending, who grows emotionally as a character (as does everyone in the group), and who is one of several essential people who will help the Avatar save the world.

It makes me wonder how a fantasy hero with a disability might be portrayed without playing into the Supercrip stereotype; after all, one of the main tropes of fantasy protagonists is that the reason they’re the protagonist is that they stand out in a crowd, whatever their unique talent is. It makes me wonder if it’s simply that their disability doesn’t need to be replaced with a magical ability (i.e., their disability doesn’t compensate for the “loss” of whatever ability an able-bodied person might possess), or if there’s something I’m missing, as a mostly-able-bodied person who doesn’t always get it.

How about Professor X? His disability (being unable to walk) doesn’t affect whether or not he can use his mental powers to speak in others’ minds or read their minds. It’s not a direct compensation for abilities lost—Jean Grey has the same powers and is able-bodied. And for that matter, if you’ve seen (spoilers!) The Book of Eli, in which a disabled character is a major part of the plot, there’s a huge possibility of the stereotype interpretation.

I’d really like to parse this out, because it’s important to me that people of all kinds are portrayed in the fiction I edit, and I’d like to be sure to watch out for stereotypes, but in the case of fantasy and science fiction—as opposed to realism, in which I find many more of the “inspiring” Supercrip stories using Rachel’s definition—it seems important for many (not all) protagonists to have special powers, whether able-bodied or not.

What’s your opinion? Would Toph be considered a Supercrip? How might Toph be made better as a character, within the bounds of the Avatar world, but not as a Supercrip, if you might consider her one?

“Clean” reads for multicultural YA girls

- Stacy 11 Comments

ETA 11/6/12: As with all my book lists, I’m putting this on Pinterest so I can more easily keep this list up-to-date. For a more recent version—including the books mentioned below and books published since 2010—see my Clean Reads for Teens board.

 

 

I have a friend who is the leader of a church group for girls 12-18, and she asks:

I want to set up a little library for our YW. [Young Women] These are multi-cultural girls, low income, some from illegal families. I would love to get your suggestions as to good books to put in the library. Since the library will be at the church, they do need to be on the “clean” side, but the girls range from age 13-17 and I think can handle some more complicated themes.

I have a start of a list here, but would love your additions to the list. “Clean” should include nothing stronger than “darn” or the occasional “crap” or “hell,” and on-screen violence should be kept to a minimum; no sex/sexual conduct beyond kissing/holding hands (at least, not in-scene), though romance is great. That doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t handle tough subjects, though. The Maze Runner, for example, is dystopian, but still a clean read overall. Even a book that tackled rape and its aftermath, or something similarly violent, could be appropriate for a list like this depending on how it’s written.

In general, I’m an advocate for good literature over judging a book by what isn’t in it, and my friend is that kind of reader, too. But given that this is a church-associated library, the suggestions do need to be “appropriate,” if you know what I mean. Feel free to suggest titles that might not be shelved in a church library ONLY if they’re borderline (i.e., something my friend my suggest the girls look up on an individual basis if she feels they’re ready for them).

For example, The Hunger Games may not be for everyone. I love it, and would hand it to any teen I knew who didn’t have a problem with a little violence. But some teens are more sensitive than others, so it might be important in a church context to gauge just how well the reader might welcome the visuals they’d get from that book, especially when it might as easily be picked up by a 12-year-old as a 15-year-old. (Then again, given that we live in a dystopia and modern teens know it, perhaps they’d be just fine with it.) Public library, no problem. But it’s the kind of thing that a conservative church library might not be the best place for.

This is NOT a fantasy-only list. Feel free to add YA-appropriate “clean reads,” particularly but not limited to multicultural books, from any genre. I’m just biased for SFF, that’s all. 🙂 It is a tough list to assemble, though, because I hate to recommend something as “clean” when I haven’t had a chance to read it myself.

  • The Maze Runner, James Dashner
  • The Sisters Grimm series, Michael Buckley *
  • Conrad’s Fate, Diana Wynne Jones
  • The Dalemark Quintet, Diana Wynne Jones
  • A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle and its sequels
  • Matched, Ally Condie (to be published in Nov. 2010)
  • The Princess and the Hound, Mette Ivie Harrison, and its sequels
  • Princess of the Midnight Ball, Jessica Day George, and its sequel Princess of Glass
  • Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, 2008, Nahoko Uehashi, and its sequel, Moribito II (this is technically a middle grade book, but the cool thing about it is that it can be appreciated by all ages–the main character is a 29-year-old woman who protects a young king)
  • Wildwood Dancing, Juliet Marillier
  • Book of a Thousand Days, Shannon Hale
  • Flora Segunda, Isabeau S. Wilce, and its sequel Flora’s Dare
  • Little Sister, Kara Dalkey, and a sequel
  • The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley
  • The Blue Sword, Robin McKinley
  • Foundling (Monster Blood Tattoo #1), D.M. Cornish, and its sequel, Lamplighter **
  • Uglies, Scott Westerfeld, and its sequels ***
  • Midnighters series, Scott Westerfeld ***
  • When My Name Was Keoko, Linda Sue Park
  • A Single Shard, Linda Sue Park
  • The Goose Girl, Shannon Hale
  • Princess Academy, Shannon Hale
  • Enna Burning, Shannon Hale
  • Impossible, Nancy Werlin *** (this one has some really tough themes—rape, single teen motherhood, manipulation and control—but for a mature teen reader, it’s a must-read)
  • Sabriel, Garth Nix, and its sequels Lirael and Abhorsen
  • Tantalize, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and its sequels *** (possibly too much sensuality, according to the author, and a possible replacement would be her Rain Is Not My Indian Name)
  • Sucks to Be Me, Kimberly Pauley
  • Silver Phoenix, Cindy Pon
  • Devil’s Kiss, Sarwat Chadda *** (strong themes of sacrifice and redemption)
  • Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones, and its sequels
  • The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, Nancy Farmer
  • The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer ***
  • The Devil’s Arithmetic, Jane Yolen
  • The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare
  • Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Mildred D. Taylor
  • Blue Willow, Doris Gates
  • Beauty, Robin McKinley (and she rewrote this same tale later as a more complicated book, Rose Daughter)
  • The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Pope
  • The Agency: A Spy in the House, Y.S. Lee
  • The Agency: The Body at the Tower, Y.S. Lee
  • The Hallowmere series, Tiffany Trent and coauthors (be forewarned, though, that it’s out of print and only 6 of 10 books were published, so the end is on hold indefinitely)

There are so many books I want to recommend but can’t, because in this case a book with even the occasional s-word wouldn’t be something we’d want to put in a booklist handed out at church or in a church library. That leaves out excellent titles such as The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, but hopefully the girl who is the right reader for that book will find it anyway.

So, that gives us a starting point. What other books might be suggested for this list? I’m low on historical fiction, contemporary realism, and non-fiction, mostly because I’ve just listed a few good books off my own shelves and pulled a few titles from the multicultural SFF post. There are SO many titles about civil rights and slavery—feel free to suggest some, as I only have one on this list—but there are so many other time periods and issues that books tackle, too. So, light and heavy, as long as its clean. Go!

* Technically, this is a middle grade series, but the books are loved by older girls too and I think would be a fun recommendation for girls who like fairy tales.

** Starred titles may have a little bit more violence than you might want in the library; you might want to read it first to be sure.

*** Can someone remind me, as it’s been a while, whether the language in these books goes beyond made-up cursing and slang? Or if, in the case of Impossible, the rape scene is too graphic for a conservative audience?

Updated multicultural SFF booklist

- Stacy 15 Comments

ETA 5/22/12: I’m keeping this book list up to date on Pinterest nowadays, linking each book to its Goodreads entry. It’s much easier to just pin a book than to keep this list up to date. For the running lists (broken down by age group and genre) and more, go here (sorry, the link was broken for a while there):

 

ETA: I’ve finally gotten the ability to edit the post back, so I’ve put as many of the suggested books into the list now as I can. Suggestions always still welcome. This is a continuous project.

I’ve gotten a lot of great suggestions to add to the list, but my website seems to still be broken, and my own computer has a dead motherboard (well, it did when I started writing this last week—thankfully, it’s now fixed). I’m still figuring out why WordPress won’t let me edit any of my old content.

So, in the interest of having one place that people can use as a resource, I’m going to copy everything into this entry. Rather than divide the list by what I’ve read and what I haven’t, which was just more a personal exercise last year in wondering whether my own reading habits had reached past my own culture, I’ll divide the list by age group and genre (fantasy/SF). What that means is that I am not making a comment on how good I think a book is or recommending it/not recommending it—there are several books on this list I haven’t had a chance to read yet. It’s simply a list compiling what’s out there. I’ve also added books that I’ve discovered over the last year or that have been suggested to me in the comments. Go to the previous booklist post for comments on some of the books in this list.

Middle Grade Fantasy

  • Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, 2009, Grace Lin
  • Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, 2008, Nahoko Uehashi, and its sequel, Moribito II
  • City of Fire, Laurence Yep
  • The Tiger’s Apprentice, Laurence Yep
  • Dragon of the Lost Sea, Laurence Yep (and pretty much anything else written by Laurence Yep)
  • Zahrah the Windseeker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
  • Chronus Chronicles, Anne Ursu (someone mentioned this and I haven’t read them—are the main characters people of color or is it set in a non-Western culture? from its Amazon listing, it seems to star a white girl and use Greek mythology, which are great, but don’t fit the definition we’re using here)
  • The Red Pyramid, Rick Riordan
  • Sword and Wandering Warrior, Da Chen
  • The Conch Bearer, Chitra B. Divakaruni
  • Circle of Magic quartet, Tamora Pierce
  • Circle Opens series, Tamora Pierce
  • Pendragon series (?)
  • Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
  • Lavender-Green Magic, by Andre Norton
  • Dragon Keeper and Garden of the Purple Dragon, Carole Wilkinson
  • Moonshadow: Rise of the Ninja, Simon Higgins
  • The Magical Misadventures of Prunella Bogthistle, Deva Fagan
  • Magic Carpet, Scott Christian Sava
  • Marvelous World #01: The Marvelous Effect, Troy Cle
  • Ninth Ward, Jewel Parker Rhodes

Middle Grade Science Fiction

  • The Animorphs series
  • The True Meaning of Smekday, Adam Rex

Young Adult Fantasy

  • Wildwood Dancing, Juliet Marillier
  • Book of a Thousand Days, Shannon Hale
  • Flora Segunda, Isabeau S. Wilce, and its sequel Flora’s Dare
  • Little Sister, Kara Dalkey, and a sequel for which I’ve forgotten the name
  • Magic or Madness, and its sequels, Justine Larbalestier
  • Eternal, Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • Tantalize, Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • Tantalize: Kieren’s Story, Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • Sucks to Be Me, Kimberly Pauley
  • Silver Phoenix, Cindy Pon
  • How to Ditch Your Fairy, Justine Larbalestier
  • Guardian of the Dead, Karen Healey
  • A Wish after Midnight, Zetta Elliott
  • The Black Canary, Jane Louise Curry
  • The Secrets of Jin-Shei, Alma Alexander (older YA and up)
  • The Worldweavers Trilogy, Alma Alexander
  • The Will of the Empress, Tamora Pierce and its sequels
  • Libyrinth, Pearl North
  • Across the Nightingale Floor and its sequels, Lian Hearn (older YA)
  • Devil’s Kiss, Sarwat Chadda
  • Annals of the Western Shore series, Ursula K. LeGuin
  • The Two Pearls of Wisdom (or Dragoneye Reborn as it’s known in the US), Alison Goodman
  • City of the Beasts, Isabel Allende
  • Blood Ninja, Nick Lake
  • Magic under Glass, Jaqueline Dolamore
  • Stormwitch, Susan Vaught
  • 47, Walter Mosley
  • Pemba’s Song, Marilyn Nelson and Tonya C. Hegamin
  • Rogelia’s House of Magic, Jamie Martinez Wood
  • Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie
  • The Icarus Girl, Helen Oyeyemi
  • Invisible Touch, Kelly Parra
  • Soul Enchilada, David Macinnis Gill
  • Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Alison Goodman
  • The Comet’s Curse: A Galahad Book, Dom Testa
  • Bleeding Violet, Dia Reeves
  • Liar, Justine Larbalestier
  • Meridian, Amber Kizer
  • Ruined, Paula Morris

Young Adult Science Fiction

  • The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, Nancy Farmer
  • The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer
  • A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Leguin
  • The Shadow Speaker, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu
  • Extras, Scott Westerfeld
  • Black Hole Sun, David Macinnis Gill

Unsure of whether these books are MG or YA (have not read yet, pulled titles from Shweta Narayan and The Happy Nappy Bookseller‘s lists. Can someone give me a head’s-up what categories they fit in?

  • A Posse of Princesses Sherwood Smith. (Is this YA?)
  • The Dragon Keeper, Carole Wilkinson
  • A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer
  • The Wizard series, Diane Duane
  • The Green Boy, Susan Cooper
  • The Magical Adventures of Pretty Pearl, Virginia Hamilton
  • Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed, Virginia Hamilton
  • The Night Wanderer, Drew Hayden Taylor
  • Dread Locks (Dark Fusion), Neal Shusterman

Please feel free to continue to leave other suggestions in the comments.

Link roundup

- Stacy

Thanks for all the comments on my last post discussing writing African American characters (Is my character “black enough”?). The perspectives in the comments are great—just the kinds of things that people writing cross-culturally need to hear as they think about their characters. If you haven’t read the comments (and there are a few more on my LJ mirror and on Facebook), make sure to do so.

No news is still good news. I’m reading away on some really awesome submissions, going through revisions that I asked for from some writers, presenting some books to my acquisitions committee, and all that kind of stuff. We come closer and closer every day to having books to share with you! We just still don’t have much to talk about specifically… yet! But we hope to soon.

In the meantime, here are some links that I’ve already shared on Twitter and Facebook, but if you haven’t seen them there, check them out:

Two friends of mine who just sold their debut novels in the YA market talk on Writing Excuses about breaking in: http://bit.ly/aEWrcJ.

Congratulations to Howard & Sandra Tayler for ten years of Schlock Mercenary: http://bit.ly/9w7WsZ

On the main Lee & Low blog, they’re running a poll about picture books with same-sex parents.

Speaking of the Lee & Low blog, always check in on them on Fridays for a roundup of diversity related links in the feature This Week in Diversity.

And if you somehow missed Elizabeth Bluemle’s post about The Elephant in the Room (complete with hilarious/cute illustrations from a number of children’s illustrators), you need to read it, and all the comments.

Oh, and random star sighting: I saw Liam Neeson on Friday night in the movie theater. No, I didn’t go to see The A-Team (that’ll be next week)—he walked past me. You could tell where he went from all the rubber-necking moviegoers. But no mob as there was for Will Smith IN THE VERY SAME THEATER that I watched Karate Kid in, apparently. I didn’t see him, but the mob waiting outside told me he was in there. There’s of course always the chance that the rumor that Liam Neeson was in the building somehow morphed to Will Smith via opening-weekend movies? (That is, Will Smith directed KK. Liam Neeson starred in A-T. Both opened last weekend. Telephone ensues.)

Is my character “black enough”

- Stacy 14 Comments

I recently got this question from a writer, who agreed that answering it on the blog would be useful:

My hero is a fifteen-year-old African American boy [in a science fiction story]. A few of my alpha readers (not all) have said that he doesn’t sound “black enough.” I purposely made him an Air Force brat who has lived in several different countries to avoid having to use cliche hood-terminology. I want him to be universal.

Do you have thoughts on this either way?

Is there a possibility that my potential readers could really be offended that a) I am “a white girl writing a book about black people” and b) that my character doesn’t sound black enough? I’ve looked through your blog and website and haven’t found anything specific to my needs on this particular question. Perhaps I missed it?

…should I use Ebonics or not use Ebonics?

First of all, black people—just as white people or Latino people—are a very diverse group of people. There are people who speak in Ebonics [ETA: which I believe would be more accurately referred to as BVE–Black Vernacular English] and people who speak plain old suburban English, people who speak with any of a variety of Southern accents and people who have Chicago accents, people who speak with French or Spanish accents (or who speak French or Spanish or an African language). So the question of whether a particular character in a particular situation sounds “black enough” is a complicated question, one that even the African American community can’t necessarily agree on. Within the community (and I say this because I asked a coworker who is African American, who can speak with more authority on the subject than I can) it’s often a question that draws on complicated factors, such as money, privilege, “selling out,” skin tone (relative darkness or lightness—literally, being “black enough”), and hair texture, which all relate to how much a part of which community a person might be.

The question, then, is fraught with loaded meaning not only to do with stereotypes, but also socioeconomic meanings. [And, edited to add, because it might not be clear enough: The question can also tend to be offensive because of that diversity and the loaded meaning the question carries.]

Which leads me to the question of your alpha readers. What are their demographics? Is it a diverse group? What is their experience with the military? Is more than one of them African American? When writing cross-culturally, you’ll want to be sure that your beta readers include sufficient numbers of the member of the group you’re writing about. Every individual experience will be different—one person’s opinion on whether a character reads as African American will probably differ from another person’s, especially if their socioeconomic background and regional experiences are different. An African American from the St. Louis suburbs will have a different life experience than someone who grew up on a farm in Louisiana, whose experiences will probably be different from a kid who grew up in Harlem or someone else who grew up in Seattle.

If your local writing group isn’t very diverse, you might need to branch out for beta readers who you can rely on to comment on that particular element of your story—perhaps through an online writing group, perhaps through the SCBWI. You might even approach a local high school and ask if any of their students who come from a similar background to your character might be willing to give you feedback on your manuscript. Do you have connections with a local Air Force base? Perhaps you might network with people you know in the military to find someone who can give you feedback on that aspect of the character building.

To answer your other questions: it’s always possible that someone will be offended by a white person writing about a person of color, but generally, most readers I’ve talked to who care about diversity in fantasy and science fiction want that diversity to come from everyone, not just writers of color. This is why I emphasized alpha readers—it’s important to make sure that if you’re not from that background, you do your research (which it sounds like you have) and then run it past someone other than yourself who understands that culture or background (in this case, you’ve got two cultures going on: African American and military, particularly Air Force, which has a completely different culture than Army).

A few someones is even better, to ensure that you get different points of view and can mesh that feedback into something that works for your particular character, who will be an individual in his own right and not a representative of a group that plays into a stereotype.

Which leads into your next question: should you use Ebonics? And the answer to that is: I don’t know. Do African Americans in the military use Ebonics? Do only some of them, and does it depend on their family history/region of origin? Do their kids speak to each other in Ebonics? Or do they have their own way of speaking that’s particular to the Air Force community? (My uncle was in the Air Force and I have a couple cousins who might read this who may be able to answer that question; they’ve never spoken anything but “Midwestern” to me, but they might have spoken differently to their friends who were also Air Force brats.)

And that’s important too: people often have different vocabularies when talking to different groups of people. When my roommates from Georgia talked to their family, their accents became stronger. When I talk to my rural family, the word “crik” has been known to creep back into my lexicon. So ask yourself, “what’s the context my character is in?” as well.

And of course, that’s just me spouting off from the point of view of an editor. Readers, feel free to chime in and help out writers who write cross-culturally: what other issues should they be aware of when writing African American characters?

Kickstarter funded! Thank you!

- Stacy 1 Comment

I just woke up to see that our Kickstarter has been fully funded with 11 hours to go. You guys, I’m speechless. I went to bed knowing we had $2000 left to go, and wondering if we’d make it. iStock_000009849257Small

Wow.

So, a big thank you to everyone who made this happen: All the people who tweeted, blogged, and shared on Facebook about it; all the people who participated in the auction; and especially all the people who pledged. We’ll officially be open for submissions from writers come Jan. 1 because WE MET THE GOAL!

For you writers: keep an eye on the Tu Publishing blog, where we’ll be posting official submission guidelines in the next few days!