IBARW: Writing characters with a different background to your own
I was meaning to write this post for ibarw (International Blog Against Racism Week) last year, but other matters got into the way. The advice is still valid - I saw the discussion in Elizabeth Bear's LJ on a similar topic: how do you get around to writing those same characters of colour/ethnicity/religion etc and not commit the same mistakes everyone is chastising commercial media for?
The following is a roadmap of sorts to a character of a different background than your own.
Assume you've found a place in your story for such a character. Or they showed up and now you have to put up with this strange person and his Armenian ways until you write his story and get rid of him and his rocket-launcher. The hardest way is when you consciously try to include someone non-Western-white because you've read the ibarw archives and it shook you to the core.
The first tenet is that they're people, too. For a moment, as you plan your piece, forget about racism and discrimination - and all the preconceptions that come with it. All the stereotypes. Instead, think of why this is more difficult for you than writing a character of the same ethnicity, class, religion and culture as your own.
You're not sure what makes them tick. But the underlying structure is the same (and if you deny that, there's really no point in trying to write inoffensively). A child is born; it grows in an environment that shapes it. What is the family you envisage for this character? Where did they learn or study? What friends did they have, who was the first crush, who was the person they looked at and said "I want to be like them"?
These are the questions you should ask yourself about any character. The only difference is that with one that parallels you, you can draw on your own experience. Maybe you didn't watch Beverly Hills, 90210, but you know girls who did, and you know what they talked about. When I talk about Kamienie na szaniec and its importance in perpetuating the knightly Polish mythos, you have no idea what that means.
Now, start digging.
Personally, I've found books to be the best way to immerse yourself in a culture. The advent of the inner monologue lets you understand not just actions, but the reasons for them. Find the book that parallels your character's upbringing, or a book they would have read. If you're writing about a different ethnicity in your own country, you can walk into your neighbourhood bookstore and find those very books. You don't have to read a ton; simply enough to be certain of what that culture really is, as opposed to your own preconceptions of it. (Needless to say, try to find an insider's view. Trying to write of African culture based on the diaries of most Victorian explorers will get you stoned.)
An anthropologist would be better able to define a culture, but from a writer's perspective it informs the moral code, the imagery, and the interaction patterns of a character.
On the moral side, it helps to define a hierarchy of sins and virtues. Note that your character might not subscribe to them directly, but somewhere in the back of her mind there's a mother (or grandmother, or nursery matron if he's a Russian raised in 6-day nurseries and only seeing his mother on Sunday, his father not at all) telling her "this is bad". Or "this is good", and there is a moment of warm pride. The fallacy here is to rely on quick descriptions in guidebooks; there are more nuances to cultures than that. Personally I prefer books here, in particular the great historic epics of a culture. They tend to show both the accepted morality for at least the social class of choice, and the consequences of going against it. You have to update it for a modern setting, but under the surface, it's there.
The imagery is the easiest. Song lyrics may help you, but so will advertising copy. Going one step deeper, especially for educated characters, requires reading the set texts of a culture, the ones they would study in school. Shakespeare for Anglosaxons, Pushkin for Russians, Goethe for Germans. You want the metaphors, the analogies, but the attitudes as well. Thunder may evoke a vampire's castle for you, but for a Japanese person it may just paint a summer storm.
Interaction patterns are the hardest, and you may not be able to escape anthropology texts. Or you may just watch a soap opera (or read a sprawling family saga) with a discerning eye. If possible, try to find one where the writers and producers were of the same culture as well. (Here is where writing Venezuelans gets easy.) If you can find books or sites advising children of your own culture in dealing with parents of the culture you're researching, they can be a godssend as well. Who does a person of this culture, gender, position talk to? Who do they ignore? Who do they listen to quietly? How has it changed since they were children?
And now that you have those three things defined - mix them up. You know your character's personality; what do they think about them? Do they go along, rebel, ignore? Dumped in another culture, will they try to consciously learn, or just assume that the guy working in a mortuary is a Dalit they should avoid touching? As always, there may be a middle-ground - shaking that hand, but flinching. It can give a richness to your plot, or even a jumping point to a whole new story.
I've found that the most effective use of non-Western-white-American characters is the one where you don't stress their Black Panther membership or the samurai swords on the stand by the door. The point is not to dump those details into your story, but to filter the character through them and arrive at their individual balanced, culturally-informed worldview. It's when you go that deep, to the cultural layer just above the personality foundation, that good characters happen.
And now that you've done that homework, why not apply it to others? Just because a French person is white doesn't mean that they have the same culture as the white American (and if you try to convince them otherwise, they'll puncture your eardrums with words alone). Class comes with a culture type of its own as well, as does sexual orientation in many places, and many places on their own; I read a fascinating article about South USA child beauty pageants recently. This is an exercise to do each and every time you write a major character of another background of your own.
Obligatory disclaimer: I am not American. I am Caucasian, Polish with various other bits mixed in. At age 9 I spent half a year in a Paris classroom for new immigrants; it stripped any prejudices I may have had before and caused me to hurl several 19th century children's books at the wall, hard. I have a library and RSS subscription list that makes inroads at following my own directions, especially when writing Americans. They are very strange people.
The following is a roadmap of sorts to a character of a different background than your own.
Assume you've found a place in your story for such a character. Or they showed up and now you have to put up with this strange person and his Armenian ways until you write his story and get rid of him and his rocket-launcher. The hardest way is when you consciously try to include someone non-Western-white because you've read the ibarw archives and it shook you to the core.
The first tenet is that they're people, too. For a moment, as you plan your piece, forget about racism and discrimination - and all the preconceptions that come with it. All the stereotypes. Instead, think of why this is more difficult for you than writing a character of the same ethnicity, class, religion and culture as your own.
You're not sure what makes them tick. But the underlying structure is the same (and if you deny that, there's really no point in trying to write inoffensively). A child is born; it grows in an environment that shapes it. What is the family you envisage for this character? Where did they learn or study? What friends did they have, who was the first crush, who was the person they looked at and said "I want to be like them"?
These are the questions you should ask yourself about any character. The only difference is that with one that parallels you, you can draw on your own experience. Maybe you didn't watch Beverly Hills, 90210, but you know girls who did, and you know what they talked about. When I talk about Kamienie na szaniec and its importance in perpetuating the knightly Polish mythos, you have no idea what that means.
Now, start digging.
Personally, I've found books to be the best way to immerse yourself in a culture. The advent of the inner monologue lets you understand not just actions, but the reasons for them. Find the book that parallels your character's upbringing, or a book they would have read. If you're writing about a different ethnicity in your own country, you can walk into your neighbourhood bookstore and find those very books. You don't have to read a ton; simply enough to be certain of what that culture really is, as opposed to your own preconceptions of it. (Needless to say, try to find an insider's view. Trying to write of African culture based on the diaries of most Victorian explorers will get you stoned.)
An anthropologist would be better able to define a culture, but from a writer's perspective it informs the moral code, the imagery, and the interaction patterns of a character.
On the moral side, it helps to define a hierarchy of sins and virtues. Note that your character might not subscribe to them directly, but somewhere in the back of her mind there's a mother (or grandmother, or nursery matron if he's a Russian raised in 6-day nurseries and only seeing his mother on Sunday, his father not at all) telling her "this is bad". Or "this is good", and there is a moment of warm pride. The fallacy here is to rely on quick descriptions in guidebooks; there are more nuances to cultures than that. Personally I prefer books here, in particular the great historic epics of a culture. They tend to show both the accepted morality for at least the social class of choice, and the consequences of going against it. You have to update it for a modern setting, but under the surface, it's there.
The imagery is the easiest. Song lyrics may help you, but so will advertising copy. Going one step deeper, especially for educated characters, requires reading the set texts of a culture, the ones they would study in school. Shakespeare for Anglosaxons, Pushkin for Russians, Goethe for Germans. You want the metaphors, the analogies, but the attitudes as well. Thunder may evoke a vampire's castle for you, but for a Japanese person it may just paint a summer storm.
Interaction patterns are the hardest, and you may not be able to escape anthropology texts. Or you may just watch a soap opera (or read a sprawling family saga) with a discerning eye. If possible, try to find one where the writers and producers were of the same culture as well. (Here is where writing Venezuelans gets easy.) If you can find books or sites advising children of your own culture in dealing with parents of the culture you're researching, they can be a godssend as well. Who does a person of this culture, gender, position talk to? Who do they ignore? Who do they listen to quietly? How has it changed since they were children?
And now that you have those three things defined - mix them up. You know your character's personality; what do they think about them? Do they go along, rebel, ignore? Dumped in another culture, will they try to consciously learn, or just assume that the guy working in a mortuary is a Dalit they should avoid touching? As always, there may be a middle-ground - shaking that hand, but flinching. It can give a richness to your plot, or even a jumping point to a whole new story.
I've found that the most effective use of non-Western-white-American characters is the one where you don't stress their Black Panther membership or the samurai swords on the stand by the door. The point is not to dump those details into your story, but to filter the character through them and arrive at their individual balanced, culturally-informed worldview. It's when you go that deep, to the cultural layer just above the personality foundation, that good characters happen.
And now that you've done that homework, why not apply it to others? Just because a French person is white doesn't mean that they have the same culture as the white American (and if you try to convince them otherwise, they'll puncture your eardrums with words alone). Class comes with a culture type of its own as well, as does sexual orientation in many places, and many places on their own; I read a fascinating article about South USA child beauty pageants recently. This is an exercise to do each and every time you write a major character of another background of your own.
Obligatory disclaimer: I am not American. I am Caucasian, Polish with various other bits mixed in. At age 9 I spent half a year in a Paris classroom for new immigrants; it stripped any prejudices I may have had before and caused me to hurl several 19th century children's books at the wall, hard. I have a library and RSS subscription list that makes inroads at following my own directions, especially when writing Americans. They are very strange people.