Your Black Ain't Like Mine

This has been such a busy week for me, I have not been able to get to my blog.  At some point, I hope to pre-write my blogs and just upload whichever one is slated for the day; but at this point, blogging is just one of the spinning plates in my life.  Though these blogs may get sporadic on occasion, blogging is a creative endeavor that allows me to connect my passion for culture with my interest in demographics and market segmentation.
In fact, that is my topic for today: how writers should think about writing for the cultural marketplace.  Having worked in both radio and television, I have retained an enduring interest in marketplace dynamics, particularly as they apply to demographics.  Having an interest in the dynamics of the marketplace works very well for me as a writer, and yet, there are times when it seems that the marketplace has little impact on publishers in real life.  For example, as a black woman, I am always interested in black America, and the psychographics of black culture; or rather, how the market is segmented by income, age, regionalism, and other such cultural factors that truly impact perspective. It would seem that publishers wishing to make inroads in obtaining “ethnic” market share would take psychographics into consideration when establishing a market plan for a particular culture.  As for writers, a good writer knows that a character’s perspective and identity are the result of environmental influences — or psychographics.  Certainly, a discussion of what constitutes an environmental influence, and the relative strength of environmental influences, would be key to the author’s thought process, but we won’t take the time to examine that here.  Suffice it to say, no matter how “black” I think I am, my black may not be like your black (or what you think black should be).  My black identity is based on the cultural influences that have surrounded me from childhood.  Those influences are not all black influences.  They can be a result of any number of social, or even political factors, but they are at work on my viewpoint as a character in my so-called life.  Add generational perspective to the mix, and you’ve got all kinds of different black going on.  For example, last week, I mentioned the cultural influence of the Cosby Show on my generation.  Bill Cosby’s show influenced Americans regardless of color.  In my mind, The Cosby Show was one of the last truly iconic sitcoms on television.  It would be great to have another Cosby-type show on TV, but even if such a show did exist, it is likely that it would not have the same impact as the original.  Why?  Because there are so many entertainment choices for Millennials (the generation of young people who will be coming of age in the next five years), that no single program acts to influence a wide swath of that population.   This is what author, Chris Anderson, calls the long tail.   If the long tail can apply to “white” America, then as an identifiable segment of the market, it should also apply to black America, or Latin America, or Asian America, or Native American America, and so forth.  Besides that, any marketing professional will tell you that black America (and all the other culture Americas) are not monolithic; despite the way they are portrayed in our media.  Black American life is wide and vast and deeply layered.  From Harriet Tubman with her brave shepherding of slaves to freedom; Sojourner Truth, stumping for both equal rights and women’s rights during the 1800’s; and even Mary Grant Seacole’s heroic nursing of sailors during the British Crimean war to Jay Z, one of the wealthiest men in hip hop. Each life is equal in reflecting black life.  They are assuredly as equal as Tamarion Crackhead, who always seems to be able to get a starring role on television cop shows.   Look, any researcher worth his salt could find numerous examples of heroism, social justice, literary excellence, or any other laudable attribute, in black American life, and even rooted in African cultural tradition.  Yet, American media, including publishing, prefers to employ the old, the tired, the “us and them” standard in creating products (yes, a book is a product) for black audiences.  Is this an attempt to prove some deeply buried belief?   Wouldn’t a glance or two at the spending habits of Black America erase any doubts about the viability of the market, and the varied interests of black readers?  (Note:  The purchasing power of black Americans is estimated to reach $1.1 trillion dollars by 2012.   Book and magazine purchases are a significant portion of spending in black households.) One would think so.  One, depending upon the publishing entity, would be wrong.

Now, contrary to everything I have said heretofore, I would like to put on the hat of representative of black America for just one moment – I own hundreds of books.  In that respect, I am as black as black can be.  It should be noted, that black readership has followed an upward trajectory since publishers began targeting black readers and tailoring product offerings to black audiences.  This tailoring includes the introduction of a broader range of subject matter.  Yet, the more things change, the more they stay the same for those who refuse to get a clue.  Many writers, writing books for black America, still write in narrow channels.  What are these channels so egregious to the black reader?  Popular topics include the following:

• Teen Pregnancy
• Drug Abuse
• Drug Dealing
• Slavery
• Racism
• Physical or Emotional Abuse
• Helping white people connect to their spirituality using ancient ethnic wisdom, or voodoo
• Saving weird white kids who have no white role models, and getting in trouble for it.
• Being welcomed into a white community and making friends with white people
• Crime (evergreen in the industry)
• Being black and how to deal with such an affliction – I didn’t realize it was an affliction until someone told me it was.  Imagine my shock.

What a fun set of memes.  No wonder these books (oftentimes written by white authors) are of little interest to black readers and do not sell.  Where are the black Harry Potters?  Where are the black Frodos (or, even better, Legolases)?  Moreover, why are publishers so terrified of a black person on the cover of a book?  Don’t ya’ll know Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben have been making mucho money for their respective companies for years?  As much as it pleases you, dear author, to excise your conscience with another story about how black women get abused by their abusive alcoholic boyfriends, or how grating racism is on the black soul, I encourage you to run from those themes like you would run from a house on fire.  You will not sell books to a wide range of black America with such themes because frankly, it comes across as arrogant and preachy.  Save your sermons for church if you want me to spend my hard-earned twenty-eight dollars and ninety-five cents.
So, to repeat, there is no monolithic black culture.  Continued insistence on viewing the black reader as part of some stereotypical group is not only insulting, it is more of a reflection of the insister’s ignorance than any indication of black life.  Nevertheless, if you want guidelines, consider the following: The black reader wants the same things that the reader known as Everyman wants, i.e., a well-written story which satisfies his/her literary craving.  That story might be a mystery.  It might be romance.  It might be action-adventure.  It might be fantasy.  It might be biography.  Whatever genre the story, the one thing above all that is required is authenticity of voice.  It is the only way to capture the black reader.  Pasting a cardboard stereotype in your book and featuring a bucket load of slanged  up trash talk only marks you as a poser.  Worse, it will alienate your reader, and  make you look insensitive.
Blind Item:  One well-known author wrote a book in which a white protagonist goes into a bar full of black patrons.  This protagonist, who is female, picks a fight with a big, brawny black man.  As a reader, I was horrified by the racist assumptions inherent in the scenario.  The message was that any black man would hit a woman given provocation.  The message was that black people had no morals, and if the protagonist wanted to stir up trouble, she only needed to go to a black area of town.  It was extraordinarily insensitive.  If the writer didn’t see that, the editor should have.  If the protagonist somehow sought forgiveness for her racist views, I never knew it.  I stopped reading after that scene, the first in the book.  I also have not purchased any other of that author’s books.  The protagonist could have gone to any bar.  Alcohol and anger (the protagonist was angry) = trouble.  There was no need for racial implications in this text.
In conclusion,  let me share one final truth about the black reader.  This is a truth that does cover the entire group of readers, and it may be the only one that is stereotypical.  That truth is this:  Black readers, unlike white readers, do not only read books by authors who are black (again, research indicates that many white readers do not read multiculturally).  In my mind, it is just a reminder that black readers are much more discriminating in their literary tastes.  Not that is a truth worth thinking about.

Cooking Up Culture : Black American Cuisine

According to the U.S. Census, there are almost 40 million black Americans living in the United States. While this information is interesting, such numbers do little to educate writers about the diverse communities of people who are identified as black by the Census. I think one of the best ways to begin an exploration of a culture, is to start with food. Black American culture is diverse. Cultural traditions vary by region, and by family. That is why food is a great way to examine heritage; food reflects the influences on a region and a culture. Indeed, it must be stated that black American culture is not some monolithic structure grafted onto the backbone of every infant born with 1/8 drop of African blood. It is, for non-blacks, a perception, an assumption of truths, which is often based on a lack of knowledge. In black America, black culture means different things to different people. For some, it is a connection based on what has been done to us as a people. For others, it is a deep well, a place to go for refreshment, for renewal, for inspiration. In truth, it is all of these things and none of these things. The reality it that what we call “black culture” is a conglomerate of many peoples, many cultures, and many societies. Blackness is the very essence of global. Blackness comes in every shade, every language, every nation. Therefore, there is no standard system of black behavior–I found this out when I moved to Minnesota from the south. The social understanding of “blackness” that I brought with me was repeatedly challenged. Black culture was vastly different from what I had known in the south. I found myself guilty of believing that skin color meant commonality. It doesn’t. That is why it is important for writers crafting black characters to give that character more than “blackness.” (You would not believe the number of authors who seem to think black heritage is a character trait). If you wish to write for a black audience, flesh your characters out as fully as possible, understanding that, to people who are labeled as black by society, the word carries a multitude of different meanings and patterns of behavior. It is also important to understand that much of the “blackness” that you see on television is not authentic. It is what a primarily white industry envisions as “black.”

So, we will briefly examine the cuisines of black America; and then I will share one of the recipes from my black heritage.

Black American Cuisines

Black American Cuisines include the following: Caribbean Cuisine, Southern Cuisine, Low Country Cuisine, Creole Cuisine, various traditional Black African Cuisines, and good old American Soul Food.

Caribbean Cuisine is firmly rooted in traditional black African cookery. This style of cuisine was brought to the Americas and used in Caribbean style cooking prior to mass settlement. Modern Caribbean cuisine has mostly been influenced by three groups: Africans, Amerindians, and Asians. However, Caribbean cuisine also reflects the influence of the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British. Signature Caribbean dishes include barbecue (an African invention), callaloo soup, coo-coo, and jerk chicken.

Southern Cuisine was highly influenced by Africans brought to the Americas as slaves. Displaced from their homeland, African cooks were forced to be creative and to use whatever foods were available to them. Signature dishes include grits, buttermilk biscuits, banana bread, pecan pie, and black-eyed peas.

The tidal plain of the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina is called the Low Country by the area’s residents. Low Country Cuisine (also known as Gullah or Geechee cuisine) is characterized by access to abundant seafood. Low Country cuisine blends seafood and rice to make a wide variety of meals. Signature Low Country dishes include fried catfish, fried fish fingers, crab-cakes, hoppin-john, and she-crab stew.

Creole Cuisine is often confused with Cajun Cuisine. However, Cajun Cuisine receives its influences from French Canadians of Acadian heritage who settled in the Bayou region of Louisiana. Cajun cuisine takes many of its influences from African cookery, but it is not the same as Creole Cuisine. Creoles of color is a term used to describe people of mixed French, Spanish, and African ancestry in Louisiana. In any event, Creole cuisine is characterized by the addition of tomatoes and seafood. Signature dishes include crawfish etouffe, corn and crab bisque, blackened fish, and jambalaya.

Growing up in the South, I enjoyed many soul food dishes. Soul food is the term used to describe traditional and modern versions of black American cooking. Many of these dishes originated during slavery. It was customary for slaves to be given the left-over, undesirable cuts of meat from slave owners. To survive, blacks transformed these poor foods, turning them into nutrient-rich meals, which they supplemented with vegetables from their own small plot gardens. Employing creativity, and techniques brought with them from Africa (many Africans were farmers), black Americans were able to create a new cuisine. As such, black American cuisine can be examined as an actual aspect of black American culture (as can various styles of music). Many of the dishes invented by black Americans from that time period are viewed as highly desirable now; others, not so much. Signature soul food dishes include cornbread, black-eyed peas, country fried steak, greens and ham hocks, red beans, and chitterlings (you know, pig intestines).

Roots of Black American Cooking

Africa is the world’s second-largest continent. It accounts for 12% of the earth’s population. It is home to 50 countries. Geographically, Africa is divided by the Sahara Desert. Africans living above the Sahara are generally referred to as North Africans. Africans below the Sahara Desert are generally called sub-Saharan Africans. This geographical divide is also, in many ways, a cultural divide. Because sub-Saharan Africa is primarily black Africa, we will focus on the food traditions of this portion of Africa in looking at Traditional African Cuisine. Black African cuisine can also be divided regionally into East, West, and South African style cookery. Many of the dishes found in the African diet can also be seen in the black American diet. Signature African dishes include jollof rice, chicken yassa, and benne cakes.

I don’t eat as many heritage foods now as I did when growing up. Eating habits have changed dramatically over the past several years. Although I am not a vegan, I have always been interested in healthy eating. While there are many Black American dishes that could be healthy with a few changes to the traditional recipe, to me, greens just do not taste good without ham hocks. One of my favorite recipes from my heritage is sweet cornbread. My mother doesn’t like sweet cornbread. She only makes it sweet when she knows I will be eating it, so I’m not sure how authentic it is to the black experience, but sweet is the way I prefer my cornbread. It should be noted that growing up in Texas, my family had many cultural influences. We were exposed to Mexican American and German American cuisines. These are the cultural influences that shaped my food tastes, and my outlook. Mexican cuisine was served in our home more often than soul food because it was cheaper, and we were not wealthy. Anyway, here is my recipe. Let me know if you try it and like it.

Sweet Cornbread

Prep Time: 10 minutes               Cook Time: 20 Minutes                  Servings: 5 – 6

Ingredients:

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup sugar, you can substitute honey

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

2 tbsp melted butter or canola oil

2 cups buttermilk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 F.

2. Spray an 8-inch square baking pan with cooking spray.

3. Sift cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt together.

4. In medium bowl, beat eggs. Add oil and milk. Mix until blended.

5. Stir cornmeal and flour mixture into the wet mixture.

6. Pour batter into prepared pan.

7. Bake 20 minutes, or until browned on top.

8. Serve with butter and honey. Or, in true southern style, slather with butter, pour some buttermilk over it, and eat with a fork.

Cook’s Note: I have a convection oven which cooks foods much faster. Be sure to allow the batter to continue cooking if it does not seem done. The edges should pull away from the pan, slightly.

Using Cultural I.D. Characters as Theme Carriers

As a culture writer, you have access to several important tools: Cultural Constructs, Functional Constructs, and Cultural I.D. Characters to name a few.

Today, we will be looking at how you can create a cultural I.D. character as a "carrier" of your story's theme. First, let's define the term. A cultural I.D. character is a character whose identity, heritage, story action, and message blend together to support your story's theme. Amy Tan is a master at this. Because we have been examining aspects of Chinese culture, let's look at how Amy Tan created a cultural I.D. character to carry the story theme in The Bonesetter's Daughter.

The BoneSetter's Daughter

In the story, Precious Auntie carries important family secrets, but she is voiceless, unable to share her secrets with her daughter, LuLing. LuLing grows up and, like her mother, she is also unable to speak. Eventually, there comes a time in LuLing's life when she wants to share her secrets with her own daughter, Ruth. Yet, LuLing is trapped in her voiceless state by a new enemy, Alzheimer's. The Bonesetter's Daughter is an incredibly layered story. It brims with nuance, and is a wonderful example of cultural constructs, functional constructs, and the use of culture touchstones. Let's break it down into components.

The Bonesetter's Daughter

Possible Shadow Belief: It is important to share family history.

Cultural I.D. Character: Ruth, a young Chinese American woman, is raised in a Bohemian fashion, having elements of both Chinese and WASP culture in her upbringing. She works to distance herself from her Chinese heritage in an act of rebellion against her mother's ghost-chased past and generational voicelessness (which she does not even realize is generational).

Cultural Construct: The Bonesetter's Daughter spans three generations. The story shows the changes in culture that take places as a result. Historically, the Chinese family structure was based on ideals set down by Confucius. Confucius identified Five Family Relationships: Subject/ Ruler, Father/Son, Older
Brother/Younger Brother, Husband/Wife, and Friend/Friend. These relationships were, of course, patriarchal. According to Confucius, raising daughters was like raising another family's child because the daughter would eventually leave and move in with her husband's family. There, she had no power unless she bore a son. If a wife did not bear a son, her husband could bring another woman, or many women, into the household. Many changes occurred in family structures during the Communist Revolution. We won't go into them here. Tan does show both of these cultural aspects in the story. For our purposes in observing how she used cultural constructs in the story, we have to look at what the author implies. In my mind, it is this: Women were powerless in Chinese culture unless they bore a son. Precious Auntie is not only voiceless. She is powerless. Her silence and lack of power are enforced by the culture of the time. Brilliantly, Tan incorporates the traits as generational legacies, thereby transforming something that is historical social culture, into a female legacy within that family.

Functional Construct: An accident prevents Precious Auntie from sharing her family story. Alzheimer's disease prevents LuLing from speaking. Ruth must break free of the external "cultural" barriers and learn to speak.

Theme: In the end, Ruth comes to understand the betrayal that led to her mother's voicelessness. She realizes that she, too, is voiceless. Tan then deploys culture as a plot device to bridge the divide between mother and daughter. In the end, not only are we convinced that Ruth must speak, but we, as readers, know that we too, must speak our truths. Moreover, we must share our stories, our secrets, and our legacies with those in our lives who are bound by them; not in a way that will hobble them, but in a way that will free them from the pain of the past.

In conclusion, the Culture I.D. Character can be used to convey complex, difficult themes. They are stand-ins for the reader, allowing the reader to experience the emotional highs and lows of story truth in a more profound way. Obviously, everyone cannot be Amy Tan, but for the culture writer, she is a must-read author. Her handling of culture, her understanding of how to deliver culture messages, and her ability to use nuance mark her as a writer whose techniques are well worth studying.

The Hubris of Color

Topic: Writing Ethnic or Culture Fiction

Culture Source: the movie, The Visitor, written by Thomas McCarthy

I admit it. I have been self-indulgent. I started this blog with the best intentions. This blog is based on a class that I taught at the Loft Writer’s Center in Minneapolis, so it’s not as if I have to dig for material or even for inspiration. Yet, blog topics have been consumed by politics and off-subject musings. Such preoccupation ends now. As a consumer of media in many forms, I genuinely believe this topic to be timely. While the rapidly aging Baby Boomer generation was homogeneous in culture and ethnic makeup, Gen-X, Gen- Y, and Generation Millennials, are far more diverse ethnically, culturally, and ideologically. If you’re trying to build or maintain a career in writing, this is important because it will impact what agents and editors are buying.
So, as a reminder, this blog examines methods and techniques for writing ethnic and culture stories. The methodology is a result of opinion and of research. I will use examples from books, movies, and other aspects of pop culture to provide support for the viewpoints. However, the views and critiques expressed are opinion only. Please feel free to share your own views and opinions.

With our purpose firmly in mind, this week’s topic is the 5 deadly sins in writing Ethnic and Culture Fiction. While I don’t have the space to cover everything in this posting, over the next five weeks we will examine each of the sins. So, to begin at the beginning, the 5 Deadly Sins in writing ethnic or culture fiction are:

1. The Hubris of Color
2. Ethnicity as character
3. Outdated message models
4. Co-opted culture
5. And finally, incongruent touch points.

This week, we’ll examine the Hubris of Color. This particular deadly writing sin is one of the most difficult to conquer because it comes from a place deep within. Linda Seger, author of Making a Good Writer Great, calls this place the writer’s shadow. The writer’s shadow can act as powerful force either for good or bad in our writing. In essence, the writer’s shadow is personal perspective. That perspective may be accurate or inaccurate, but it is always shaped by a writer’s personal world view. Some of the best writers harness the writer’s shadow to deliver compelling, dramatic stories that connect with readers or audience members. However, the only way to use this force effectively is to understand your shadow. Understanding your writer’s shadow is even more important in writing ethnic and culture fiction. Why? Well, let’s just be clear about the tools we writers draw from to shape our stories. One of the strongest influences in our imagination arsenal is the real world. Writers use elements from the real world to construct a fictional world. In matters dealing with ethnicity and culture, we all know that in the real world, fairly or unfairly, skin color carries implications. What kind of implications? That’s the hard part. In the real world, the “implications” of color arise from complicated layers of thought and emotion both of which are influenced by transmitted culture (transmitted culture meaning what we are taught). In a fictional world, it is the author’s responsibility to determine the implications of color or culture and to transmit that meaning to the reader. This responsibility should not be taken lightly because using care in creating a fictional world with well-conceived ethnic touch points or authentic culture markers gives your story an edge that other stories won’t necessarily have. Using care also prevents you from inadvertently sending a negative or dismissive message to your reader or audience.

Let’s take a look at our culture source to examine the Hubris of Color idea more thoroughly. In the movie, The Visitor, written by Tom McCarthy, the story protagonist Walter Vale is a white male widower. Walter lives the comfortable, if bland life, of an academic in Connecticut. A teacher of economic theory, he seems to have a connection and interest in music. Still, at the beginning of his character arc, Walter lacks both passion and purpose. This changes when he interacts with an illegal immigrant couple he discovers squatting in his New York apartment (they are victims of a real estate scam). Friendship grows between Walter and the young Syrian man Tarek Khalil. It turns out that Tarek is a musician, as was Walter’s deceased wife. Tarek’s instrument of choice is the doumbek, or African drum. McCarthy uses the drum as a leitmotif. It provides the rhythm and energy that Walter lacks in his bland, colorless life. Tarek teaches Walter how to play the doumbek, taking Walter with him around the city to those places that, presumably, white academics do not go. This sharing of a new and different way of life enables Walter to regain passion for his own life. By the way, that’s one of the reasons this story is a culture story. It shows Walter interacting with a culture that is unfamiliar to him. One of the primary ideas of a culture story is that we can learn from others. I’d also like to point out that Tarek has apparently taken this culture journey, as he has mastered the doumbek, an African drum. Tarek is not African, he is Syrian. However, Zainab, Tarek’s girlfriend, is from the African country of Senegal. When Tarek’s mother, Mouna, sees Zainab for the first time, she makes a remark about the darkness of Zainab’s skin. This seems incongruent with the rest of the thematic sensibility of the story. After all, Mouna is Syrian. She has been living illegally in America for many years. Has she never seen a dark-complexioned person of African heritage? Is her comment based on color prejudice? If so, why is she presented as a possible love interest to a man who benefits from the talents and energies of two people, Zainab and Tarek, with skin colors that are darker than his. This mistake reflects the fifth deadly sin, incongruent touch points, but we’ll examine that sin later.

Back to Walter, it is his story upon which the plot builds, and yet, as Walter’s story continues, it is Walter’s lack as a character that prevents the story from soaring beyond mediocrity. The reason for this failing has nothing to do with the acting, the setting, or the movie direction. The story is leeched of vitality because it is told from the viewpoint of the wrong character. Without Tarek, without Mouna, without Zainab, Walter Vale will go back to his boring life as a professor. At the end of the story, at the end of the movie, Walter is happier, but for how long? He achieved . . . scratch that, Walter didn’t really achieve anything. He didn’t work for his happiness. He didn’t really even have the goal of achieving happiness. Moments of happiness fall into his lap and Walter’s only grace is that he doesn’t resist them. Contrast this marshmallow heroism with the drama inherent in Tarek’s situation. He is in the country illegally. He wants to avoid deportation. He doesn’t want to be separated from Zainab, or cause her to be deported. He doesn’t want to bring trouble to his mother, or cause her to be deported. Tarek has the most to gain or lose. Tarek’s goals affect other characters in the story. While the movie presents Tarek as a little irresponsible, Tarek’s character has goals, yielding to motivations, which could have been explored in a truly evocative manner. Walter’s goal, if you can call it that, only affects himself. Remove Walter from the story and you still have a story. Remove Tarek from the story and you do not. Tarek is essential to this story. He provides a flash point, an intersection of goal, motivation, and conflict necessary to the main character and to the building of drama. Despite Tarek’s value in this story, midway through, he is sidelined, placed in a detention center. Tarek’s arrest gives Walter the opportunity to become a hero, but instead, Walter, true to his character, mills around and does nothing more than shout a bit. After that, he turns his attention back to his own life. With the loss of Tarek, the plot falters and must be angled in another direction. Tarek is in a detention center. Zainab leaves Walter’s apartment, disappearing almost completely from the story, and Walter, renewed by what he has learned from Tarek, now engages in a mild flirtation with Tarek’s mother. Walter the character is like a slowly opening bud. He is once again reaching for what life has to offer him, but, with the imminent deportation of Tarek, and with Mouna following her son back to Syria, the best life has to offer Walter Vale is a return to his drone-like existence, still devoid of color, character, and interest.

Don’t get me wrong, McCarthy is an able storyteller. He deserves credit for his ability to force interest around an only mildly interesting character. The problem for McCarthy and The Visitor is that the very interesting visitor is axed from the movie leaving us with a resident who is boring. Walter teaches us little because he has little to teach. If Walter could express his character arc in words, it might go something like: My wife died. I lost interest in life. I was forced to go to New York. There were some people living in my apartment without my knowledge or consent, but hey, I’m a nice guy. I let them stay. I learned how to play African drums. Learning to play the drums made me feel better. End of story.

Perhaps the The Visitor was meant to be lyrical, a sort of American Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, but inserting the unbridled energy of Tarek into such lyricism made me want more. That’s always true of audiences and culture stories. We watch movies like The Visitor for the same reason that Walter finds Tarek and Zainab interesting. We want to experience more than the banality of our own, sometimes bland lives. We’re eager for the rhythm and vibrancy inherent in the beat of the drums and the swirling color of the new and different. Walter can’t give that to us. He is as much of an audience to that energy and vibrancy as we are because he does not really learn what Tarek has to teach. He experiences Tarek, Zainab, and Mouna, as a tourist experiences a trip to a far-flung exotic locale. There is a trip, but no journey. Walter merely exists within the framework of a culture story. He is a beneficiary of characters with real journeys. Their stories are human stories. Their stories come from being Syrian or Senegalese in America. Their stories come from being in America illegally. Their stories come from what they have learned, how they are treated, and how they cope. Their stories can teach us about life. Yet McCarthy places the character without the story in the primary role. This isn’t the case of Walter being a narrator who relates what another character learns. Walter’s viewpoint is all that we get. In a movie teeming with human stories, the guy without anything to teach is the main character. Perhaps that’s why McCarthy made Walter a teacher. It’s an honorary title. McCarthy isn’t alone in using WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) characters to tell the stories of others. Many writers, especially screenwriters, seem to believe that audiences will only be interested in the lives of non-WASPs if their story is framed by a WASP. Examples of this conceit abound: We are All Welcome Here, The Secret Life of Bees, The Last Samurai, Outsourced, and even Hairspray (though Hairspray handles the culture elements far better than the stories cited).

Because of its Hubris of Color, The Visitor colonizes Tarek, Mouna, and Zainab, thieving their cultural value and unashamedly transferring their treasure to an undeserving Walter. Ultimately, as much as it is a culture story, The Visitor only respects one culture, the WASP culture. Had McCarthy chosen to tell The Visitor from Tarek’s point of view, he might have had a Slumdog Millionaire on his hands, rather than just another small, but well-received independent film.

Ancient Writer Wisdom
1. Ancient wisdom says to make your protagonist the character with the most compelling story.

2. Ancient wisdom says in a fictional world, it is the author’s responsibility to determine the implications of color or culture and to transmit that meaning to the reader.

3. Ancient wisdom says in a culture story, do not transfer cultural value to undeserving characters

May the wisdom of the Ancients carry you forward in your writing journey.


References:
www.thevisitorfilm.com

www.ehow.com/video_2372574_origins-doumbek-african-drum.html

www.mechelleavey.com
www.lindaseger.com/index.html

3 Important Things

I'm looking for excuses as to why I have only posted one entry since I began this blog. There are no excuses. I've come to see that blogging, at least in my life, is akin to getting pregnant and then changing your mind after labor starts. You can't go back, even if you want to. Your blog hangs out here like a flag shouting abandonment. For those of you who actually read this, and I’ve heard from a few of you, my apologies. If there is any excuse for my lack of consistency, it is that I have been busy. I've been working on setting up the new website for the teen writers group that I host. You can find us at www.aswrittenby.com. One of the reasons I'm so passionate about encouraging writers to write more diversely, is that when I go into the public schools to work with students -- I work with several hundred kids from 4th grade through high school, coordinating education programs for students -- these kids come from a wide variety of backgrounds. Yet, when you look at the lists of books put out by publishers (see our myspace page: www.myspace.com/teenswrite) it's the same old story, very little diversity. I understand some of the difficulties publishers face with this. Last year, I went to the Loft Literary’s Festival of Children's Writers, I was the only black American present (that's the p.c. term). The only other diversity represented was a Chinese woman, who spoke English poorly, but who monopolized a part of a session that I attended; my critique buddy Aleli, who is both an extraordinary writer and Filipino; and another young woman of Japanese ethnic heritage. This young woman had been adopted child by a family of Scandinavian heritage (a common background in Minnesota). For those of you who believe that culture is a result of ethnicity, adoption has shown us that culture and attitudes are largely a result of upbringing. As writers, this is an important distinction to make when crafting a character from a non-WASP background. Anyway, back to the festival, Minnesota is one of the few remaining majority WASP states, so I look at my "lone black chick in the room" as par. Then again, I've gone to many writer events where I am one of only a few tans in the crowd. With that in mind, I'm talking to authors who are not part of recognized minority groups: black, Latin, Asian, Native American. I am begging you, as a peer, a reader, and someone who mentors young writers, please think of diversity as an added value to the stories that you write. Sadly, I don't know why such an idea would even be considered revolutionary or unusual. Writers should be able to embody the spirit of the characters they present in stories. Yet, most books on writing leave out what writers need to know about writing diversity. The purpose of this blog is to open the topic up for discussion.

So, with my intended audience very much in mind, let's talk about adding diversity to your stories. When you diversify your character cast, you have to be aware of three very important things:

1. Your character's humanity is not up for condescension and/or judgment. I talked about this with my teens in terms of villains at our last AWB meeting. We all know that one-dimensional villains, the villains that are evil because they are evil, don't work in novel-length books. These villains might work in comics, maybe even in graphic novels, but novel-length requires more exploration of character goals and motivation. This also holds true in writing diverse characters. One of the great things about writing novels is that writers can avoid the tendency that we see in television to label and stereotype. I've worked in television. In this medium, the equivalent of showing not telling is the visual cue. It has been 143 years since the ratification of the 13th Amendment, which ended slavery. Since that time, black men, despite many brave acts of valor, have been characterized in such as way that simply showing a picture of a man with dark skin brings up associations in our minds, those associations can be either positive or negative, but they exist. Is television the culprit for stereotypes? No . . . and yes. No because television programs merely employ the simplest form of storytelling—the blonde bombshell, the smart brunette, the rich white guy...they're all stereotypes. And yes, because the television executives who make the story telling decisions often don't want to go deeper or try harder. They prefer to reinforce stereotypes. It makes their jobs a bit easier. So, like it or not, laugh tracks, smart and caring white people, black pimps, Latino gang members, Asian brainiacs, all go hand in hand on television. If you want a more accurate vision of truth in America, watch the commercials. They must appeal to the demographics they're trying to reach. To connect, they must use marketplace affinity, an ability to show that they understand our real lives; they’ve got the solution to make things better. Anyway, as writers we don't have the luxury of visual cues. It is our responsibility to communicate using words to create mental images.
I've read many writers who believe that the following words: black, Latino, Asian...are characterizations. They are not. Black, to describe Africans brought to this country during slavery (or who were here before European settlement as some records suggest), is a term applied by people of Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, Gaelic, Gallic, and Spanish heritage. Of course, other terms have been used and were more prevalent during the period after reconstruction when new immigrants from Ireland and other parts of Europe could at least say that though they didn’t come in on the Mayflower, they were not black, they were white. The term black American has seen resurgence over the past ten years as a new wave of immigrants from Somalia, Eritrea, and other war-torn African countries, have created a desire for Americans of African heritage with the equivalent of "Mayflower" roots to differentiate themselves from the new immigrants. And Latin America covers a wide range of geographic regions and ethnic peoples, as does Asia. The terms mentioned above are really geographic classifications, leftovers from a period of history when it did matter whether you were Polish, Scottish, Irish, or African, Chinese, etc. It mattered because it defined your place in American life. Yet, the reality is that geographic heritage offers a wide range of cultural diversity. Writers writing for the new American marketplace should just dispense with ethnic stereotypes. It is culture, rather than ethnic heritage, that defines a character's world view. Culture, that is where a writer must focus to understand how a person who may be from a particular ethnic heritage views the world. In other words, culture affects character.

2. If you don't have familiarity with anyone from a heritage that you know well enough to ask stupid, and maybe even offensive, questions then perhaps you shouldn't include diverse characters. Yes, it's catch-22. Okay, include the Japanese cosplay girl, just think very carefully about the purpose behind the character's inclusion in your story. Diversity is a value, but your character should also have a purpose to the story. We are not trying to create token diversity in stories. If you want to be successful for the under 40 crowd, however, a narrowly ethnic perspective is not acceptable. Research shows that teens and young adults prefer a more diverse cast. It’s a part of the fabric of their culture. They're post Civil Rights. They're used to diversity and many feel uncomfortable with too much homogeneity. Obama anyone? This demographic shift has played a huge role in the political climate. If it can affect what many thought to be a sure win candidate for the democrats -- Hilary Clinton, how much more is it at play in other areas of popular culture?

3. Finally, be aware that you are communicating your world view when you write. It is inevitable. We all have shadow beliefs. The best way to explore our shadow beliefs is to write. Writing, even fiction writing, reveals so much more than we want to admit. Yes, you can plot out a story to the inth degree, but how you plot, the choices you make, the through line, beats, perspective, etc, all come from inside you. Facing our shadows is a responsibility that we as writers must take seriously because ultimately, we are creating and communicating culture. For understanding to grow between human beings, our communication to human beings must contain that element of respect. This is not to say that we hold harmless just because we are purposefully communicating something that is a part of a character's culture, but we must understand the culture, the character, and the culture's effect upon our character. There's so much more to write...and now that I've gotten the first iteration of the As Written By website up and running, I will write it.

Happy writing to all. If you have a book with has a cast of diverse characters, please let me know about it. I want my teens to see these books are out there.

Are U my Mammy?

For the life of me, I cannot understand why publishers love books in which a lonely white kid befriends an eccentric, older black woman. Or maybe the black woman isn't eccentric, she's just black and she needs a kid to care for because her kids have disappeared into the ether. Look, this isn't about ethncity. People are people are people. Ethnic heritage doesn't matter. That's why these types of stories are disturbing. What are the authors really trying to say when they put outsider white kids with what I call a "mammy." You know what I'm talking about. Sue Monk Kidd got lots of press for The Secret Life of Bees. Elizabeth Berg, a favorite author of mine, penned, "We Are All Welcome Here." I'm a prolific reader. I've tried to read these "best seller" books, but I couldn't get in to them. Frankly, as a black woman, I found the viewpoints insulting. Both the authors I've mentioned are fine writers, but it seems that they're aiming for a multicultural style using outmoded models. Many "white" authors see multiculturalism as black and white. They are the ones most likely to fall into the "Mammy Syndrome." Demographics have changed publishing dramatically over the last ten years. Many established authors have been "encouraged" read pushed to include more diverse casts, so these writers rewrite Gone With The Wind. Why? I don't believe they're being racist. I think it's more a result of the shadows. All writers have shadows. These shadows are beliefs, some of these beliefs are deeply held. Some of the beliefs would horrify us if we took them out and examined them in the light of day; but these beliefs come out when we write. Perhaps we heed the warning of our editor about the lack of diversity in a story and we throw in a stock character -- a secretary, a security guard. Many authors have almost no interaction with people of color. If this is the case, the stock character can easily be crafted from a stereotype lifted from television or music, two industries that crank stereotypes out like Hershey's makes chocolate bars. More disheartening than the authors who write these stories, are the publishers who green-light them. So what am I trying to say here? Simply this: if you're a white writer, carefully examine your worldview before writing a culture story. In her book, Letting Go, author Pamela Morsi does a fine job of inclusion. In the story, she has a secondary character who is bi-racial. Morsi does employ race as a tension device, but she doesn't rely too heavily on it. She also has some things to say that make sense. Morsi is a writer who gets it. Writers have a responsibility to the reader to examine their prejudices before broadcasting them to the world. If you're lucky enough to write a future classic, history will judge you. And the future looks increasingly multicultural. Oh, and for the record, black women are more than caregivers. We are lawyers, doctors, educators, business owners, friends, and lovers. Expand your storylines to include us in these ways and then you'll be saying something.