Are you starting off on your yearly Nanowrimo marathon? If so, perhaps you’re thinking about how to diversify your cast or settings. Preferably both, right? This month I’m working on at least one new diversity post, but I also thought perhaps a list of existing resources in one place would be useful. Most of these links, which I’ve been sharing via Twitter and Facebook as I find them, can also be found on the CBC Diversity Resources page, specifically on the resources for writers page, along with resources directed at other publishing professionals such as editors, sales and marketing, and booksellers. I’ve added a few more recent articles/sites that I’ve recently run into, as well.
This is kind of a hodgepodge of links, but I think it’ll help you have plenty to think about. If I run into anything more in the next couple of days, I’ll likely add it. Most of these links apply to writing cross-culturally, but as I like to remind people, this can mean anyone writing from a perspective not their own. I’ve talked to New York City-based writers who make assumptions about Iowans based on what they’ve seen on TV that I as a Midwesterner find unbelievable at best. I’ve known probably as many writers of color who want to write about different cultures that fascinate them as white writers who would like to write about people of color. In all of these cases, if you aren’t writing “what you know,” then research is involved. You have to know what questions to ask, what assumptions you’re making because of your own worldview that your character wouldn’t make. These resources will help you with that.
Though, beware, there’s a lot of info here. If you’re Nanoing, perhaps you might want to go with one at a time to leave yourself time to write!
Stephen King’s Super-Duper Magical Negroes
Nnedi Okorafor examines Stephen King’s use of the “Magical Negro” trope and discusses how it can be avoided.
Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story
Chimamanda Adichie’s transformative TED talk, The Dangers of a Single Story, shows us what happens when writers focus on only one kind of story, and how a multitude of voices from minority cultures need to be heard for that danger to pass away.
Appropriate Cultural Appropriation
When writing cross-culturally, we need to remember whether we’re acting as an invader, a tourist, or a guest. Nisi Shawl addresses how to watch out for stereotypes, bad dialects, and other problematic portrayals of people of color.
Transracial Writing for the Sincere
Nisi Shawl’s resources for those who want to get it right when they want to write cross-culturally; how to do your research.
Challenge, Counter, Controvert: Subverting Expectations
Uma Krishnaswami on challenging subverting expectations in our writing.
Describing characters of color in writing
N.K. Jemison on how to describe characters of color in your writing without resorting to cliches and stereotypes.
Part 1: http://nkjemisin.com/2009/04/ways-to-describe-characters-of-color/
Part 2: http://magicdistrict.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/describing-characters-of-color-pt-2/
Part 3: http://nkjemisin.com/2010/02/describing-characters-of-color-3-oppoc/
A Tumblr that seeks to provide a visual representation of the everyday of microaggressions, “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults toward people of color.” Each event, observation and experience posted is not necessarily particularly striking in and of themselves. Often, they are never meant to hurt—acts done with little conscious awareness of their meanings and effects. Instead, their slow accumulation during a childhood and over a lifetime is in part what defines a marginalized experience, making explanation and communication with someone who does not share this identity particularly difficult.
Monika Schröder on Saraswati’s Way
Uma Krishnaswami on insider vs. outsider narratives (as she discusses Saraswati’s Way with Monika Schroder).
Don’t put my book in the African American section
N.K. Jemison’s response to the segregation of black writers (and often as a result, readers) in some libraries and bookstores.
Parenthetic Comma Phrases, Anyone?
Uma Krishnaswami on the use of parenthetic comma phrases to explain cultural details to the reader as if the reader were always an outsider to the culture. How else might these details be conveyed without alienating readers who come from that culture?
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Peggy McIntosh provides a classic list of privileges which a white middle class woman enjoys that many of other socioeconomic statuses or races do not. An example for writers seeking to write from a perspective not their own to muse on their own privileges, whether similar or different, so they can see their blind spots.
Things I Don’t Have to Think about Today
In the same vein as the above, science fiction writer John Scalzi talks about “Things I Don’t Have to Think about Today” paired with his post on narrative usurpation, covering why he wrote “Things I Don’t Have to Think about Today.”
“Things I Don’t Have to Think about Today”
Mitali Perkins on Writing Race
A Checklist for Writers
There’s no such thing as a good stereotype
N.K. Jemison on the “strong female character” stereotype that also connects with racial and cultural issues.
Interview Wednesday: Stacy Whitman of Tu Books, a Lee and Low Imprint
Uma Krishnaswami interviews Stacy Whitman about using cultural experts to read cross-cultural writing or to check details of a controversial or historical subject (even when the writer is of that culture).
Is my character ‘black enough’?
From my own blog (be sure to read the comments section).
My SCBWI Winter Conference 2012 talk on writing multicultural books
Notes from my SCBWI Winter Conference talk in which I quote from the book below (questions to ask to knowing what questions to ask)
A Beginner’s Guide to the Deep Culture Experience: Beneath the Surface
This book by Joseph Shaules is directed to potential US expats living abroad helping them to think about cultural differences and ways to adapt to their new countries and enjoy the journey. But when read from the perspective of a writer, the questions Shaules raises can be applied to world building and culture building in writing.
My talk on the need for diversity in fantasy and science fiction (includes a resources for writers section in part 3).
The Language of the Night
This book is unavailable electronically and also out of print, but if you can find Ursula K. Le Guin’s collection used or at your library, published by HarperCollins in 1978 and 1989, two excellent essays for writers on diversity are “American SF and the Other” and “Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?”